gi8 The Extraction of Sugar from the [Septembei, 
this, as on other subjects, does not come by inspiration. 
Furthermore, according to newspaper statistics, 30,000 
work-people have been thrown out of employment in 
the United Kingdom, owing to the importation into the 
country of the bouuty-fcd beet-root sugar produced in Ger- 
many, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. 
Although I and others may not agree in every particular 
with the striaures the late Baron Liebig published about 
thirty years ago, in his well-known work “ Familial Letteis 
on Chemistry,” on the system pursued in Germany and other 
continental countries for fostering the beet-root sugai indus- 
try, nevertheless I think that this manufaauie is not a ie 1* 
citous example of the advantages a nation would deiive by 
affording its sons the best opportunities for acquiring a 
sound and complete course of scientific and technical edu- 
cation. Granted that a great deal of chemical and engineer- 
ing ingenuity has been expended on the improvement of this 
industry, it is all but certain that the talent applied to its 
improvement would have been unfruitful if the industiy 
itself had not' been fostered direCtly or indirectly by State 
grants. If industries have not only to be started, but have 
to be perpetually upheld by State bounties, they cannot be 
regarded as sound commercial industries.! Of what value 
* Investors before staking their money in this new industry for England 
ought to read the letter signed “ An Observer,” which appeared in the 
“ Times ” of May 31st, 1884. . , , , . l 
f It is admitted, even by strict political economists like the late John btuar 
Mill, that protecting duties are defensible when they are imposed temporarily 
in hopes of neutralising a foreign industry, in itself perfectly suitable to the 
circumstances of the country ; as the superiority of one country over another 
in a branch of production often arises only from having begun it sooner, the 
one possessing no advantage over the other except a present superiority of 
acquired skill and experience. “ It is a just remark of Mr. Rae, Mr. Mill 
observes in his “ Principles of Political Economy,” “ that nothing has a greater 
tendency to promote improvements in any branch of production than its trial 
under a new set of conditions. But it cannot be expected that individuals 
should at their own risk, or rather to their certain loss, introduce a new manu- 
facture, and bear the burden of carrying it on until the producers have been 
educated up to the level of those with whom the processes are traditional. 
A protecting duty, continued for a reasonable time , will sometimes be the least 
inconvenient method in which the nation can tax itself for the support of such 
an experiment. But the prote&ion should be confined to cases in which there 
is good ground of assurance that the industry which it fosters will after a time 
be able to dispense with it.” I have quoted these observations of the late 
Mr. Mill, that protecting duties, or the guaranteeing from loss those who start 
important industries in a country, are defensible for a time on striCt political 
economy principles, as English statesmen of the present day need to be re- 
minded of this national duty. In Ireland, for example, where there exists 
little manufacturing skill and experience, what more prosperous industry 
could be started than the manufacture of the different substances iodine, 
bromine, and the potash and soda salts— existing in kelp ; the raw material, 
seaweed, abounding in the sea encircling the most poverty-stricken districts oi 
that part of the United Kingdom ; but Government aid, in the form ot a 
guarantee against loss, is required to start it. 
