TARIFF REFORM: A 'WARNING FROM CANADA. [TO Till EDITOR OF
MIR "SricerA.roa."1 Sru,—I enclose a letter which I have received from my father, of Montreal. As he has had a wide experience of trade between England and Canada for nearly fifty years, I think his testimony is of some value.-1 am, Sir, Sze.,
43 North End Road, Rampstead. ALICE REEVE.
"I am worried about the Tariff Reform business, although I cannot bring myself to believe that England will ever allow her- self to enter upon a course that will lead her down to everlasting perdition, and a couriae which, when once entered upon, will paralyse her powers of recovery. When once she starts, she will be bound hand and foot, and will go on from bad to worse. Every change in the impost mist increase.
It will be like Germany with the rye-tax. Dr. Theoder Barth, thirty years ago, fought in the Bundesrath against the proposal to put fifty pfennige on it, because he thought that would only be a beginning and the tax would increase. iiismarek sent word to him that he did not dream of ever increasing it. It is now AN marks, just a hundred times what they began with. Listen to the New York Evening Post :— It has always been a puzzle why the defenders Of Free-trade in Great Britain, who now find themselves in so dangerous a position, have not drawn more upon the experience of the United. States as a horrible exempla—the corruption of political life; the dictation of our tariffs by selfish interests ; the growth of the Trusts, the offspring of Vrotection. All those things afford a very arienal of it4uments for Free-tradera elsewhere.' And we in Canada well know what it ineans to got on the downward path, and how impossible it is to stop, to say nothing about turning back. Sir Wilfrid Laurier used to say •phox he was a Liberal after the school of English Liberalism. He dare not say that now, nor dare lie profess his Free-trade principles as be did in those days.
And why should we hope that England will be any different from other nations in the way of being able to withstand the temptations a tariff holds out to corrupt practices P
ALEEED REEVE..
[We wish that Mr. Reeve's letter of warning could 1,a posted up,in every town and village in the laud for all inon to read.—]n. Spectator.]
Previous page
