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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 52

To the Electors of the United Kingdom

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To the Electors of the United Kingdom.

Buckle crest of the Cobden Club

What Does Recipocity-Protection Propose to do?

It Proposes

1. To put Import Duties on Foreign Goods, which would make all of you who consume such goods pay dearer for them.

2. To thereby Diminish the Quantity that will be imported of such Goods, and therefore to diminish the Quantity of our staple articles that we now send abroad to pay for the same. For Goods are paid for in Goods, and Imports and Exports rise and fall together.

3. To throw out of Employment a number of Working Men now engaged in producing those staple articles. For if you Export less you must Manufacture less.

4. To Diminish our Foreign Trade in order to punish the Foreigners for not increasing it. For if we both Import and Export less there will be fewer Ships, fewer Seamen, fewer Docks, and fewer Labourers of all kinds wanted.

5. To imitate the very Policy which we condemn in Foreigners; and instead of going on exchanging our Cheap Goods for their Cheap Goods, to leave off taking the latter, and, as a necessary consequence, to leave off making the former.

6. To do a foolish thing because other Countries will not do a wise one.

What Imports Does Reciprocity-Protection Propose to Tax?

It must be either Food and Raw Materials which form about nine-tenths, or Foreign Manufactures which form about one-tenth of our Total Imports. Now—

If FOOd,—Are you prepared to go back to the old pauperising Corn Laws and the Dear Quartern Loaf?

If Raw Materials,—Are you prepared to add to the cost of our Manufactures, and thus assist the Foreigner to undersell us in Neutral Markets?

If Manufactures,—Are you prepared to raise their price to the Consumer and to curtail our Imports and Exports—to diminish our present production of staple manufactures—and throw out of employment the Working Men now employed in them?

Electors! if you are not in favour of Dear Food and less Work, you must oppose all Reciprocity Candidates.

Messrs. Cassell & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage Yard. London, E.C., supply the Cobden Club Leaflets in packets of 100, price 1s.