LORD BALFOUR AND LORD GOSCHEN.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In your "News of the Week" (Spectator, November 14th) you quote Lord Balfour as saying at Glasgow: "Mr. Balfour's policy of retaliation was either sheer Protection, or a dormant power which no Government was without." But in the next column Lord Goschen "was totally opposed to granting the Executive Government general powers, without a further appeal to Parliament, to meet the foreigner by a retaliatory tariff." I, an ordinary voter, have, as desired by Lord Balfour, tried to think the matter out for myself, with the result that it seems to me that these utterances of the two noble ex- Ministers contradict each other; and further, remembering the debates on the sugar-bounties, that Lord Gosehen is right, and that there is no "dormant power" existent. But probably this is only my stupidity, and the two statements run on all fours together. Is it so P—I am, Sir, &e.,
C. M.
[We do not think there is any real discrepancy. Lord Balfour of Burleigh, we suppose, meant by "dormant powers," not the right to impose retaliatory duties by Order in Council (which are presumably the general powers intended by Lord Gosehen),-but merely the right to propose retaliation to Parliament in specific cases. There is nothing whatever to prevent Ministers proposing, and Parliament considering, specific suggestions for retaliation, though Protectionist speakers often talk as if Ministers had no power to make such propositions to Parliament.—ED. Spectator.]
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