Mr. Chamberlain opened his campaign in South Wales by speaking
at Cardiff on Friday week. The first part of his speech was composed mainly of personal criticisms, a eulogy of Mr. Balfour which must be rather embarrassing to the recipient, and gibes at the members of the Free-Food League. He then went on to the discussion of that corpus rile of controversy, the tinplate trade. He showed how the industry had been affected by the McKinley Tariff, the exports from this country to America having fallen from 450,000 tons in 1892 to 65,000 tons last year. On the other hand, behind the Tariff wall a great and prosperous industry bad grown up in the United States. Sir William Harcourt had declared that the trade was recovering ; but this recovery was only partial, and due partly to the South African War, andjpartly to the increasing demands of the Colonies. He met the argument that the " dumping " of foreign steelplates was of assistance to the tinplate industry by quoting the opinion of a firm of tin- plate manufacturers that they would gladly sacrifice the right of getting foreign iron free of duty if their goods were given a preference over foreign goods in Colonial markets. He concluded by criticising Lord Rosebery's plea for commercial repose, by declaring that we did not want a soporific, but, rather, commercial activity.
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