board, as regards any comprehensive fiscal action. One of the greatest
of all war industries is the production of food; and during the war some
supposed that after it was over, there could be secured a general
agreement to protect British agriculture to the point at which it could
be relied on to produce at least a war ration on which the nation could
subsist without imports. That dream has already been abandoned by
practical politicians, if any of them ever entertained it. The effective
protection of agriculture on that scale has been dismissed as
impossible; and we rely on foreign imports as before. Whatever may be
said as to the need of subsidising special industries for the production
of certain war material is nothing further to the fiscal purpose,
whether the alleged need be real or not. The production of war material
is a matter of military policy on all fours with the maintenance of
Government dockyards, and does not enter into the fiscal problem
properly so called. But to the special case of dyes, considered as a
"key" or "pivotal" industry, I will return later.

How then stands the argument from the fluctuations of the exchanges? If
that argument be valid further than to prove that _all_ monetary
fluctuations are apt to embarrass industry, why is it not founded on for
the protection of _all_ industries affected by German competition? The
Prime Minister in his highly characteristic speech to the Lancashire
deputation, admitted that the fall of the mark had not had "the effect
which we all anticipated"--that is, which he and his advisers
anticipated--and this in the very act of pretending that the _further_
fall of the mark is a reason for adhering to the course of taxing
fabric gloves. All this is the temporising of men who at last realise
that the case they have been putting forward will bear no further
scrutiny. The idea of systematically regulating an occasional tariff in
terms of the day-to-day fluctuations of the exchanges is wholly