and state the items in millions and fractions thereof; which, though not quite exact, approximates closely enough.

It will be observed that from three items, viz, stamp duty, land and house tax, and income tax, not charged in America, England collects the sum of $116,000,000 annually.

In truth, everything is taxed either directly or indirectly in this country, every article of foreign or home manufacture being levied upon in some way or other, to help swell the amount of revenue necessary to carry on the government. Owners of land and houses, occupiers of land and houses as well, all professions, all traders, incomes from whatever source, deeds, probates, legacies and successions, bills of exchange. and receipts, patents, carriages, horses, man-servants, guns, dogs, and personal property generally, must all pay. The poor tax is another very heavy tax, being levied upon occupiers of houses, and the total amount of this tax during the year 1879 for England and Wales was $65,000,000, or more than $2.50 per head of population. More than one-third of this amount was expended for other purposes than the relief of the poor, the payments towards country, borough, and police rate, to highway and school boards having amounted to upwards of $22,000,000. The actual relief to the poor during the year amounted to $1.55 per head of population, and the number of paupers was 843,000.

Until a fortnight ago there was a prospect of a good harvest throughout the United Kingdom, but since then hope has been dissipated by continued bad weather, and we may expect as the result of another short and bad grain crop to hear of more farmers ruined, more farms thrown up, a greater depression in trade, a large emigration, and a more fully developed fair-trade agitation than we have had.

Where this agitation will end I do not presume to say, but from such observations as I have been able to make I do not think it can accomplish anything that may be of permanent good in the country, because the evil that has been done is irremediable. As a consequence, British commercial interests must continue to decline, and while I regret the prospect I take consolation in the knowledge that American commercial interests are destined to be inversely affected.

UNITED STATES CONSULATE,

Leeds, September 1, 1881.

A. V. DOCKERY,

Consul.

BRITISH "FREE TRADE AND FAIR TRADE."

REPORT BY CONSUL DOCKERY, OF LEEDS.

*

Doubt is said to be the key to knowledge. I am convinced the key is then in a fair way to being discovered, but there is still a master key to the situation which will necessitate a very long voyage of discovery, unless its hiding place be sought in quite a different spirit to that which has prevailed in this country during the past thirty years, where every man's soul has been mortgaged as it were to a single idea-self.

Trade depression has now existed several years, and appears to get no better; indeed it is now assuming very large proportions, having become to a certain extent chronic. This has led to agitation against free trade under the several names of Fair Trade, Reciprocity, and Protection, terms nearly synonymous, which agitation is daily growing in extent and in bitterness.

The press is full of a correspondence which shows that the idea of protection is widely spread. The protectionist puts his case in these words:

To buy cheap is excellent, no doubt; but unless you are able to sell dear it is of very little use to you. Men cannot live by buying alone. And we have, as a matter of

fact, got now to a stage when we find it hard to sell. We are being beaten out of the world's markets, not, as we ought to be, by free-trade nations, but by protectionist nations. We struggle and wriggle with their tariffs and seek to make treaties of commerce that shall lighten those tariffs. We demand concessions; and the foreigner smiles, for we have nothing to give in return.

The world is against us. Wherever we turn there is a prohibitory tariff, especially, and of malice prepense, directed against our special manufacturers.

What, then, are we to do? There is, indeed, a weapon with which we, too, may fight; that is, a tariff of our own. But then there comes a free trader and says, "This weapon is sharp; you may cut your own fingers with it. Do not meddle with edge tools. Bare your breast and in time the foreigner will yield to the force of reason." Is not this pretty?

Free trade might be a first rate thing in an unreal or communistic world, but it will not do in ours. Policy governs nations as well as individuals, and it is quite possible that there should be all policy and no principle in some special application of free trade, which I must say would constitute a very discreditable exception. England is really such an exception.

Free trade really meant to her nothing less than protection, because she was then in the full swing of manufacturing prosperity and supremacy. She excelled every other nation in all the great manufacturing industries; and by means of a well-conceived system of wars, resulting in the establishment of numerous colonies affording new markets, aided by her large quantity of improved machinery and her inexhaustible supply of coal, she had managed virtually to control the markets of the world.

To a country like this free trade was a splendid policy, and had other countries adopted it she would certainly have continued to benefit to their detriment, for it would have resulted in the establishment of the most gigantic monopoly the world ever saw.

"Protection" is far too mild a term to apply to such a monopoly as that would have been.

The great free-trade theory principle in truth meant cruel monopoly, and artful as were the means adopted to obtain this object, its failure has been signally ignominious.

So long as no serious obstacle in the shape of a protective tariff was encountered, English manufacturers continued to thrive, and with the acquisition of wealth many of them affected to turn themselves into country gentlemen for the sake of social standing, the effect of which was an increase in the value of land and, consequently, rents, and a period of general inflation followed.

Other countries not only refused to listen to the free trader, but set to work to more effectually protect their own small but growing industries, taking advantage of all open markets and giving nothing in return. In time they were able to manufacture enough to supply the home markets, and having these practically safe, they turned their attention abroad, and in seeking an outlet for their surplus in productions they came into competition with England. On the other hand, England had been undergoing a great change; rents had become so high that farmers were ruined or else farms remained unlet, which, with a succession of bad harvests, caused large deficiencies in the food product, to be made good by importation. The cost of the necessaries of life had be come higher; new markets for her manufactures were difficult to find; the quality of the manufactures had deteriorated, and labor had become uncertain and less productive. This was the state of affairs when she

found herself called upon to face a powerful, vigilant, and intelligent competition in markets she hitherto monopolized.

India is yet a comparatively open market through the pressure of an enormous garrison, but this may not last long if there be anything in the following opinion of an intelligent Hindoo merchant, reported in one of the London papers:

Free trade may be a very nice thing for England, but it is a very bad thing for India. We are now undersold and ruined in every direction as regards our manufactures. The cost of living is greatly increased, and the value of the rupee has diminished. Before we had the disadvantage of acquaintance with England these millions of people manufactured everything required for their own wants, and the native governments protected their own manufactures.

Now England has got a firm hold of this great peninsula; she buys the raw material here and in other countries, and inundates India and undersells us in everything, with cheap goods and clothes of all descriptions. What is the result to India? The people have been ruined and driven into the fields as laborers and agriculturists, that the people of Manchester and Birmingham may make millions of money at our expense. We are beaten and undersold at every point, and still the Manchester Chamber of Commerce cries for further reduction of our import duties for their advantage and our greater ruin.

This is what you call governing India for the Indians.

You must be great fools if you think that the people of India can not and do not understand and see through all these false pretenses.

You must be greater fools if you think that we love English rule because it is just. We prefer our own rule-the rule of Hindoo and Mohammedan kings and princes, who spent the revenues of India and did not export them to London for the payment of large pensions to thousands of officers and civilians, as well as to the wives and families of the same.

The English do not spend half their large incomes in India.

Sahib, remember you are only encamped in India; we see the flash of your bayonets at every station, and we know what devils you are to fight against black races.

But we are a patient people. We wait for the time when you will have great wars, demanding all your men and ships, when you will meet with defeat; then you will have to withdraw large numbers of your soldiers from India.

France has recently given a fillip to the free traders by increasing her tariff and terminating a treaty of commerce, and while some people urge, with force and vigor, that nothing should be done by England, others want skillful retaliation, forgetting that this may cause a further increase in the French tariff.

Of course the United States, on account of its continued devotion to protection, has come in for a full share of abuse from free-traders, but she has been well able to bear it, and can stand a great deal more without foregoing one iota of a policy which has raised the country to its present proud and prosperous position.

I also believe that we can look on with perfect indifference to any agitation for retaliation which may arise, because England is absolutely dependent upon us for the greater part of her breadstuffs, and is likely to continue so; and, furthermore, a corn duty could not sensibly affect us were it possible to impose it, for the simple reason that they would have to buy our corn under any circumstances. Powerful as the present fair-trade agitation has become, I do not apprehend it will ever reach the point of taxing food.

Free trade indirectly ruined agriculture, the mainstay of every country, in England, but a corn duty, protection, can never mend the matter. The root of the evil lies in the land system itself, land having become so very dear through the abnormal state of things brought about by free trade, that even by charging excessive rents the return to the landowner barely amounts to 2 per cent; and even a great decline in the price of land, followed by a proportionate reduction in rents, will not enable England to produce anything like the amount of breadstuffs required for home consumption.

Landlords in England are disinclined, if able, to make the necessary sacrifice, and, by consequence, I can see no permanent way out of the difficulty. A temporary benefit might be derived by taxing everything (breadstuffs excepted) that comes into the country, but as the home mar ket is as yet practically secure against the invasion of foreign manufactures, it would scarcely be thought worth while to stulify themselves by such a direct proclamation of the failure of so cherished a principle as free trade.

But the home market being thus secure, the people know well enough that no new markets can be opened by a tariff; and, as new markets are really needed, this causes whatever there is of hesitation on the part of "fair traders."

A. V. DOCKERY,

From what I have been able to learn I believe the tariff will prove disastrous to the chief industry of my district-the woolen trade. During the agitation which preceded the enactment of this tariff law it was anticipated here that a more liberal schedule of duties would be adopted, and the hopes of manufacturers were accordingly only raised for the moment, as it were, for they now find themselves face to face with little or no demand for their wares, and the complaints in consequence increase daily. It was for a little while thought that light woolen goods of a low class would benefit materially by the new arrangement, but on a strict analysis even this expectation is evidently not to be realized. And it is a matter of congratulation, not only to the framers of the tariff, who displayed so much wisdom, but also to American artisans and the American people generally, that there should be left no loopbole through which any class of woolen goods can enter fraudulently. I am led thus to speak because I have had complaints preferred against the change in the tariff which makes woolens liable to an ad valorem duty and also a varying specific duty per pound weight according to the value per yard. While as a matter of course there is here objection to any and every sort of duty levied by any other nation than Great Britain, still merchants and manufacturers in a large way of business could, with a considerable amount of explanation, understand a simple ad valorem and specific duty imposed by a foreign nation; yet it passes their understanding that a foreign country should impose a duty of 35 per cent ad valorem and also a specific duty of 35 cents per pound on cloth valued at less than 80 cents per yard, and yet a higher ad valorem duty on cloth worth above 80 cents per pound. Reputable shippers profess not to understand so complicated a schedule of duties, and I have been importuned to explain it and the effect it will have on certam kinds of cloth; but naturally I have said if persons in the trade do not understand it I cannot be reasonably expected to enlighten them, although I have gone so far as to intimate to one firm which pressed for an answer