Page:The New Protectionism.djvu/42

This page needs to be proofread.

CHAPTER II

DEFENCE AND OPULENCE

In this country the revival of Protectionism is seen to be the immediate fruit of war and militarism. Groups of our traders, exposed to growing foreign competition in this country and in the markets of the world, had long striven to plant a protective tariff for British manufacturers upon the formal programme of the Conservative party. The landowners and farmers, injured by the long-continued fall of food prices, also brought what political pressure they could towards the protection of "the agricultural interests." But Free Trade had been too long a settled fiscal policy in this country to be easily disturbed; the difficulties of reconciling manufacturing with agricultural Protection were too evident; "food taxes" were too un-

18

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.