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only in France, but also in Italy, Spain, and Austria. In Germany 
Protection is now in the ascendant. Since the last and still more 
liberal French tariff in 1874, the imports and exports into France 
have increased two-fold, in each of the three great manufacturing 
industries—woollen, cotton, and linen. Indeed, the increased 
trade in France after the liberal tariff in 1860, is said to have been 
the chief cause why France bore so well the strain of the terrible 
Franco-Prussian war. 
France committed the same error on other articles of produce, 
such as sugar, for example. They are now paying about two 
millions of money in the shape of bounties on exporting sugar, the 
consequence of which is, that their heavily taxed people are still 
more heavily taxed for the benefit of a few sugar refiners, who can 
now afford to send their sugar to this country at cost price, their 
profit being the bounty money they receive on their exports. We 
get the benefit in having refined sugars cheaper than we otherwise 
could have; the French nation, and a few of our sugar refiners, 
being the sufferers. This, however, is an error to which the 
French Government is about to apply a remedy. 
The prosperity of the linen trade in the future seems to depend 
to some extent on the supply of raw material. Ireland is the great 
flax-producing country for the United Kingdom. Last year there 
were 132,000 acres of land under the flax crop in Ireland, whilst 
twelve years ago there were nearly three times as many; so that 
large spinners have become apprehensive of a short supply of 
material for linen manufacture, and the committee of the Flax 
Association in Belfast for promoting the growth of flax, has been 
turning its attention to India and the colonies as future flax- 
producing countries. 
Another word in conclusion. With plenty of raw material, 
and hands to work it, there would appear to be no limit to the 
future extension of the linen trade. When the millions of bare 
backs-in Africa, and half-clad ones in Central Asia, are clothed in 
linen—being the most suitable clothing for the climates in which 
they live—the linen industries will be found to have gone on 
growing and increasing. 
