MR. GIBSON BOWLES (Lynn Regis)To ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he is aware that in his Memorandum, dated August, 1881 (printed in Paper 229 of 1881, Sugar Bounties), Mr. T. H. Farrer, then Secretary to the Board of Trade, stated that it had been decided by the highest legal authority that to impose a countervailing duty in order to neutralise a foreign bounty on sugar would be contrary to the most-favoured-nation Clause in existing commercial treaties; whether the legal authority thus referred to was that of the Law Officers of the Crown; whether the opinion of the present Law Officers of the Crown has been or will be taken on the point as it now arises upon the Brussels Sugar Convention and its effect upon the Treaty of Commerce with 126 Russia of 1859; and, if such opinion has already been taken, can he state generally the effect thereof?
(Answered by Mr. A. J. Balfour.) It is quite true that, in 1881, the then Secretary to the Board of Trade made the statement attributed to him in the Question. We have no record of any opinion by the Law Officers given at that time upon the subject. The answer to the third Question is in the affirmative; but it is contrary to practice to quote the confidential advice given to the Government by their legal, advisers.