Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/299

 1899.] Germany. — Trade with England. [291

recommended. In his experience, any attempt to consult the interests of one branch of industry which was suffering from the customs policy of some foreign country was immediately followed by protests on behalf of some other branch, which implored the Government not to begin a war of tariffs on so slight a provocation. The Government had to consider the interests of the whole, and to balance them one with another as best it could. To have put the "autonomous tariff" in force against the whole British Empire on account of the preferential rates accorded by Canada to the mother country would have been to begin a war of tariffs against a Power "with whom we are united by innumerable relations of a commercial, political and, I may add, of a friendly character. Such a step could hardly have been defended in the interests of our general trade, and would scarcely have met with the approval of the German people. 1 ' Count Posadowsky did not think it probable that the policy initiated by Canada would ultimately be adopted by any large section of the British colonies. These colonies would reflect that their exports to Germany were far greater in amount and far more important than their imports from Germany. But if they did adopt tariffs prejudicial to German trade, Germany would not hesi- tate to exclude them from the most-favoured-nation treatment, as she had done in the case of Canada.

Dealing with the question of certificates of origin, Count von Posadowsky pointed out that it would be most inexpedient and inconvenient to demand these certificates in the case of all countries which exported to Germany the same kind of goods that came from Canada. The whole exports from Canada to Germany amounted to 4,000,000 marks (200,000*.). Were they to impose the vexatious formality of certificates of origin upon their imports from all countries of the world in order to strike this 4,000,000 marks' worth of Canadian trade ? With regard to the " autonomous tariff" scale now in preparation, he agreed with the protectionist deputies who thought that the scale of duties ought to be high in order to make foreign States come more readily to terms in negotiating new treaties.

Dealing next with the Indian differential duties on sugar, he said that the German Government wished to reserve its opinion on the question whether these duties constituted a departure from the most-favoured-nation treatment. He would not enter into the question whether these duties were intended to favour the sugar of Mauritius and the West Indies at the expense of the beetroot sugar of the countries which paid export boun- ties. All he would say was that in its attitude towards those measures the German Government would be guided entirely by considerations of expediency. They would only exercise the power of granting the most-favoured-nation treatment " so long as the British Customs policy, and particularly the sup- plementary tariffs on sugar, did not inflict any positive injury "

t2