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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 52

"132, Piccadilly, W., Nov. 17, 1884

"132, Piccadilly, W.,

"Dear Sir,—I observe that your Tory candidate and his friends are seeking support as fair traders in opposition to free traders. They complain that we are allowed by our Government and our tariff to buy freely all the products of foreign countries, but that, owing to some foreign tariffs, we cannot sell our own products as freely as we wish to do. We can fix the duties in our own tariff and on our own imports, but we cannot fix the duties in the tariffs of foreign countries and on their imports. All this is true enough and plain enough, but what is not plain and not true is the strange belief held by fair traders that, being injured by not being able to sell so freely as we wish to do, owing to duties in foreign tariffs, we should remedy the evil by giving up the power to buy freely by putting duties on our own tariff.

"To sell freely would be a great advantage, as to buy freely is a great advantage, but neither to buy freely nor to sell freely as the fair traders recommend would, in my view, enormously increase the injury to our trade arising from the foreign tariffs which now obstruct our foreign trade.

"Let your workmen reflect on the change in their condition which free trade has made within the last 40 years, since the reform of our tariff. The Corn Law was intended to keep wheat at the price of 80s. the quarter; it is now under 40s. the quarter. The price of tea is now less than the duty which was paid upon it in former days. Sugar is not more than one-third of its cost when a monopoly of East and West India sugar existed. As to wages, in Lancashire and Yorkshire the weekly income of the thousands of workers in factories is nearly, if not quite, double that paid before the time when free trade was established. The wages of domestic servants in the county from which I come are, in most cases, doubled since that time. A working brick-setter told me lately that his wages are now 7s. 6d. per day; formerly he worked at the rate of 4s. per day. Some weeks ago I asked an eminent upholsterer in a great town in Scotland what had been the change in wages in his trade? He said that 30 to 40 years ago he paid a cabinet-maker 12s. per week; he now pays him 28s. page break per week. If you inquire as to the wages of farm labourers, you will find them doubled, or nearly doubled, in some counties, and generally over the whole country advanced more than 50 per cent., or one-half, while the price of food and the hours of labour have diminished. It may be said that milk and butter and meat are dear, which is true; but these are dear because our people by thousands of families eat meat who formerly rarely tasted it, and because our imports of these articles are not sufficient to keep prices at a more moderate rate.

"The fair traders tell you that trade in some branches is depressed, which is true, though their statements are greatly exaggerated. We have had a depression in agriculture, caused mainly by several seasons of bad harvests, and some of our traders have suffered much from a too rapid extension in prosperous years. I have known the depression in trade to be much greater than it is now, and the sufferings of traders and workmen during our time of protection, previous to 1842, when the reform of our tariff began, were beyond all comparison greater than they are now.

"In foreign countries where higher tariffs exist—say, in Russia, in France, and in the United States—the disturbance and depression of manufacturing industries is far greater at this moment than with us. Their tariffs make it impossible for them to have a larger foreign trade: we have a wide field for our exports which they cannot enter.

"We have an open market, for the most part, in South America, in China, in Japan; and with a population of more than 200 millions in our Indian Empire, and in our colonies, with the exception of Canada and the province of Victoria, in Australia, the field for our manufacturing industry is far wider than that for any other manufacturing nation in the world, and I cannot doubt that we shall gradually rise from the existing depression and shall reap even greater gain from our policy of free trade in the future than we have reaped in the past. In 1846, when the cruel Corn Law was repealed, we did not convert our landowners and farmers, we only vanquished them. Even now there remains among them a longing for protection; they cling still to their ancient heresy, and, believing in the ignorance or forget-fulness of our working men, they raise their old cry at every election of members of Parliament.

"If I have any influence with you or with any electors, let me assure you and them that for centuries past there has been no change of our national policy which has conferred and will confer so great good on our industrious people as that policy of free trade which the two greatest Ministers of our time—Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone—have fixed, I cannot doubt for ever, on the Statute-book of our country.

"The recent contest in the United States has overthrown the party of protection and monopoly. It may prove a great blessing to the English nation on the American continent. When England and America shall have embraced the policy of free industry, the whole fabric of monopoly the world over will totter to its fall.

"I am very respectfully yours,

"John Bright.

"Mr. Adam Wilde, The Morley Hall, Hackney, E."

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