Thomas Barclay

“ Scope of a Treaty or Commerce.
I must begin with a definition.
It is usual to think of Treaties of Commerce as restricted to tariffs. Nothing is more erroneous and no popular error is more detrimental to an intelligent understanding of the subject. One unpropititious consequence of the error is that treaties of commerce are popularly supposed by some to be a counterblast to free trade, by others as a step towards it. In reality, treaties of commerce are simply agreements between States relating to trade carried on between them. ”

“ In fact we must always have before our mind's eye that there is a common national interest which is the resultant of the resultants of our individual, class and industrial interests. We shall infallibly find that that resultant is in favour of law and order and peace and goodwill in our relations with other nations, for what is true of the individual in private life and of the community in municipal life, can only be true of the nation in international life. ”

“ This movement, I am of opinion, is likely to develop rapidly in the near future, and will remove one of the advantages which the foreign capitalists engaged in this industry have enjoyed in the past. I have endeavoured to show that there is only a narrow margin between prosperity and adversity in the cotton industry—how numerous are the processes through which cotton has to pass—how each process depends on the other—what a large amount of labour is involved—and how many interests there are dependent on it. ”

“ I think there can be little doubt that the increased cost of production would render it impossible for us, in face of the existing severe competition, to continue to secure the large share of the world's trade in cotton goods which we have at present, and would thus bring ruin upon an industry which supplies the means of livelihood for millions, and in which millions more are indirectly interested. ”

“ Under the regime of M. Meline, the organizer of protection in France, the new general tariff, a very high, almost prohibitive, one, was to be applied wherever not reduced by treaty. The conventional one is composed of the minimum duties which have been granted to any nation; it applies to all who have the benefit of the most-favoured nation treatment. I may mention that the differences between the general and the minimum tariff range from about 50 to 70 per cent. The coercion of the United States was in the first instance the motive of the French tariff reformers. ”

“ Read the only history of the French Revolution, based on unassailable facts, Taine's Origines, and you will see how tampering with the economics of Nature works out; how quackery breeds quackery, till the whole body politic is so weakened and undermined by "remedies" that when the shock comes, it crumbles, as the old regimé crumbled. ”

“ Let technical and commercial education be understood to be an essential branch of the work of developing the resources and forces of British industry, and be connected with this department.
Let our commercial department be in constant and daily touch with the trade interests of the country, be accessible to every man, as in the United States and our colonies, and accessible to workingmen as well as to employers. ”

“ If Congress were to establish a scale of maximum duties by a horizontal increase of the present rates, to the extent of, say, 20 per cent., such maximum tariff could be applied to those countries which wilfully discriminate against the United States, while the regular tariff could be applied to all other countries, and, at the same time, be used, as occasion should arise as the basis of special reductions of duty through the medium of reciprocity. ”

“ On the contrary, I only see one result, viz., that States retaliate against retaliators by ever-higher and farther-reaching duties; that they thereby more and more cripple their own industries, because there is hardly any article that is not the raw material of some other industry; that they promote great industrial trusts to the detriment of that free competition which is the very sap and nerve of healthy industrial development ”

“ It will be perceived, therefore, that the American interpretation of the most-favoured-nation clause is essential to American prosperity.'
The result of the American interpretation of the clause is that each tariff has to be dealt with and applied separately. An article is taxed in as many different ways as there are contracting countries; an independent tariff is applicable to every taxed article according to its place of origin. Mr. Osborne, however, observes in his article, "These considerations make American reciprocity negotiations unusually difficult, but by no means impossible." ”

“ I have heard the same thing said in France. Why? Because the Englishman is not a chicaneur: because he does not resort to tricks to get out of his bargain, if it does not suit him to go on with it: because he values his self-respect and his fair-mindedness as an asset in his business, and has confidence that they pay better in the long run than the shams and pretences and other poorspirited, hypocritical, unmanly methods of some of his competitors.
United States Tariff Policy.
Let us now examine our relations with the United States of America, which are in sore need of treaty regulation. ”

“ In the same order of ideas, societies exist in France and in Germany for the promotion of the international interests of French and German trades. The Federation des Industries et des commercants francais is an especially vigorous body which publishes a monthly bulletin recording the progress of its useful activity. ”

“ Macara says of the cotton industry of this country, so far as I have been able to ascertain, applies to practically all British industries, and this, at any rate in large part, explains that in spite of shorter hours of labour, higher wages, a higher general standard of comfort, we can still wrestle favourably with protected competitors in most of the markets of the world. ”

“ Article 12 provides that ships of either party, driven into ports of the other, through accident or need, shall be exempt from navigation or harbour dues, unless their stay is unduly prolonged or used for transacting business, and that sea-damaged or stranded goods discharged from ships of either Power shall, except for salvage dues, be exempt from dues levied by the other, unless they enter the country for consumption. ”

“ Surplus stocks of goods no doubt do End their way to the British markets and force down prices of home-made goods of the same quality. On account of this circumstance in connection with certain trades, an inconstant circumstance, a remedy is proposed which would apply to all our trades alike and be constant. It is easier to argue on generalities than, as Mr. Macara has done with regard to the cotton industries, to go to the roots and foundations of a question. ”

“ One of the chief difficulties in the way of making retaliatory tariffs effective for the purposes of negotiation with other States is that a duty cannot be reduced after it has been in operation for any time without injuring the trades wich have come to rely on it. ”

“ Macara, in the passage I have quoted from his report, said of the interdependence of our different home industries will necessarily be found to exist among the industries engaged in international commerce, and we may, in the not-distant future, see the industries of different nations arranging their affairs in a spirit of peace and amity as nations as a whole have begun to do. ”

“ Article 19 secures the trading rights of individuals; merchants and other business men on their giving proof of payment of the trade taxes in their country of domicile, are exempt from similar dues when visiting the other country, personally or by their travellers, and accompanied by samples, for the purpose of buying or selling. ”

“ They may have their own courts of arbitration, or be referred, under the arbitration clause it is now universal to insert in treaties of commerce, to the Hague Court. Whichever way it will be done, a new era is looming into view in which international commercial understandings, call them what we may, are likely to regulate interests of employer and employed, of producer, manufacturer and consumer, and perhaps even of State and citizen, and take the place of State remedies. ”

“ There is another and wider lesson to be learnt from the Master Cotton Spinners and Manufacturers' Association. It is the advantage of an understanding among the interested parties in different countries. ”

“ Natives of either country entering the other in pursuit of their calling as supercargoes, or as masters or crews of vessels plying on river or sea, shall not be subject to any trading tax in the other country. ”

“ Under Article 18, where direct railway connection across the frontier exists and the rolling stock can be transferred from one system to the other, goods in suitable closed trucks are to be exempt from examination at the frontier, on presentation of the waybill, and to be examined at the most convenient Customs station in the interior. ”

“ She would have to depend on her territorial neighbours, if her American supply were cut off, as it probably could be even by France. To make Germany, in the main at least, self-dependent for the elementary food of her rapidly-increasing population is a matter of the deepest import to her statesmen ”

“ A beginning has been made in the formation and periodical meetings of an International Committee for the examination and consideration of their common as well as respective interests, which can only lead to a widening of the scope of international understandings. ”

“ Article 2 provides that no more favourable conditions in respect of import, export, or transit duties shall be granted by either party to a third Power than are accorded to the other party; and that any concessions of this kind made to a third Power shall at once be applied to the other. ”