H THE SUGAR BOUNTIES 



countries, it is, no doubt, destined to play a considerable part in local industrial de- 

 velopment; and in this direction Great Britain appears to stand to lose in comparison 

 with the Eastern American States and also with Japan. But the resulting increase 

 in the carrying trade itself will go where the shipping can be most economically pro- 

 duced and freights most economically earned. 



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ENGLAND'S WITHDRAWAL FROM THE SUGAR CONVENTION 



Some surprise was expressed in the British Parliament at the suddenness with which, 

 at the beginning of August 1912, Mr. Asquith's Government appeared to have arrived 

 at the decision to give notice (as had to be done, if at all, before Sept. ist) that Great 

 Britain would withdraw from the Brussels Sugar Convention. But Mr. Asquith was 

 quite entitled to reply that anybody who had followed the course of events since the 

 Convention of 1902 was renewed in 1907 for a further five years had no valid reason for 

 surprise at notice of withdrawal being given. The declaration in Parliament that Great 

 Britain would withdraw was indeed somewhat mysteriously abrupt, coming as it did 

 at the fag-end of the summer just when Parliament was about to adjourn; and it was 

 natural for the Opposition to suspect that the Free-Trade party in power had an eye on 

 influencing the impending by-election in South-west Manchester, though, if this was so, 

 the result was a signal failure. But otherwise the action of the Government was in 

 accord, rightly or wrongly, with their avowed policy since 1908 (see E. B. xxvi, 

 45-47). In the autumn of 1911 Sir Edward Grey had explicitly declared (Dec. 7th) 

 that unless Russia was allowed to export in the ensuing year at least 500,000 tons of 

 sugar instead of the 200,000 to which she was restricted by the arrangement of 1907, 

 Great Britain would no longer be a party to the Convention; and owing to the opposition 

 to this proposal, mainly from Germany, this threat only had the effect of getting the 

 signatory Powers to agree to increasing the limit of the Russian export by 50,000 tons a 

 year. In such circumstances the British decision was inevitable, apart altogether from 

 the fact that the Liberal party and its leaders had always been opposed in principle to 

 the Convention and had for several years been seeking an excuse to denounce it. 



What is of more importance is to note the incontrovertible success which had fol- 

 lowed the adoption of the Brussels Convention in 1902, and which had made it possible 

 for the British Government to denounce it in 1912 without much fear of a renewal of the 

 conditions which had originally brought it into being. The object of the Convention 

 had been to abolish the bounty-system by which the production of beet-sugar in Conti- 

 nental Europe was bolstered up, and for practical purposes the bounties had now been 

 abolished and were not likely to be renewed, because France, Germany, Austria-Hun- 

 gary, Belgium and Holland had decided to maintain the Convention, in spite of Great 

 Britain's withdrawal (which was followed by that of Italy), for another five years. The 

 security against unfair competition provided by the machinery of the Convention, which 

 had already given new life to cane-sugar manufacture in the West Indies and elsewhere, 

 was therefore in a fair way to be maintained without the necessity of British adhesion. 

 It was to save the West Indies that Mr. Chamberlain had taken the matter up in 1896, 

 with the result that the Brussels Conference of 1898 was convened, leading eventually 

 to the agreement of 1902; and during these years, owing mainly to its operation, the 

 economic situation had entirely altered. In the discussion in the House of Commons on 

 August 8th it was remarkable that the official representatives of a Liberal Government 

 gave no countenance to the more extreme Free Trade view, still asserted by a few 

 Radical members of Parliament, that the Convention had done no good and had even 

 been detrimental to British interests. On the contrary, Mr. Acland, the Under-Secre- 

 tary for Foreign Affairs, explicitly denied that the operation of the Continental bounty- 

 system, by which the British consumer for a time obtained sugar at an artificially cheap 

 price, while the Continental consumer paid an artificially dear one, was economically 

 sound or advantageous, even from the British point of view. He justified the action of 

 the Government on the ground that the object sought had been attained, and that then: 

 would be no going back, but that failure to realise expectations in this respect would not 



