QUOTE OF THE MONTH (bonus)

'Free imports have destroyed this industry, at all events for the time and it is not easy to recover an industry when it has once been lost. They have destroyed sugar-refining for a time as one of the great staple industries of the country, which it always to have remained. They have destroyed agriculture … Agriculture, as the greatest of all trades and industries of this country, has been practically destroyed. Sugar has gone; silk has gone; iron is threatened; wool is threatened; cotton will go! How long are you going to stand it? At the present moment these industries, and the working men who depend upon them, are like sheep in a field. One by one they allow themselves to be led to the slaughter, and there is no combination, no apparent prevision of what is in store for the rest of them. Do you think, if you belong at present to a prosperous industry, that your industry will be allowed to continue? Do you think that the same causes which have destroyed some of our industries, and which are in the course of destroying others, will not be equally applicable to you when your turn comes? …

     What is the remedy? What is it that the Prime Minister proposed at Sheffield? He said – I am not quoting his exact words – Let us get rid of the chains which we ourselves have forged, and which have fettered our action. Let us claim some protection like every other civilised nation.

     Then we are told that if we do this the foreigners will be angry with us! Has it come to that with Great Britain? It is a craven argument; it is worthy of the Little Englander; it is not possible for any man who believes in his own country. The argument is absurd. Who is to suffer? Are we so poor that we are at the mercy of every foreign State – that we cannot hold our own – that we are to fear their resentment if we imitate their own policy? Are we to receive their orders 'with bated breath and whispering humbleness'? No, if that were true, I should say that the star of England has already set; it would not be worth anyone's while to care to speculate on her possible future. But it is not true. There is not a word of truth in it. We have nothing to fear from the foreigners. I do not believe in a war of tariffs, but if there were to be a war of tariffs, I know we should not come out second best. Why, at the present time ours is the greatest market in the whole world. We are the best customers of all those countries. There are many suitors for our markets. We may reject the addresses of some, but there is no fear that we shall not have other offers. It is absolutely absurd to suppose that all these countries, keenly competitive among themselves, would agree among themselves to fight with us when they might benefit at the expense of their neighbours. Why, at the present time, we take from Germany about twice as much as she takes from us. We take from France about three times as much, and from the United States of America we take about six times as much as they take from us. After all that, do we stand to lose if there is to be a war of tariffs?'

- Joseph Chamberlain, speaking in Greencock as he launched the Tariff Reform Campaign in October 1903