Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 by Various
page 69 of 207 (33%)
page 69 of 207 (33%)
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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 |
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