How then does the persistent Free Trader relate to the special case of the “key industry,” of which we heard so much during the war, and hear so little to-day?  I have said that the question of maintaining any given industry on the score that it is essential for the production of war material is a matter of military administration, and not properly a matter of fiscal policy at all.  But the plea, we know, has been made the ground of a fiscal proceeding by the present Government, inasmuch as the special measure known as the Dyestuffs (Import Regulation) Act of 1920 forbids for ten years the importation of dyestuffs into this country except under licence of the Board of Trade.  Dyestuffs include, by definition, all the coal-tar dyes, colours, and colouring matter, and all organic intermediate products used in the manufacture of these—­the last category including a large number of chemicals such as formaldehyde, formic acid, acetic acid, and methyl alcohol.  The argument is, in sum, that all this protective control is necessary to keep on foot, on a large scale, an industry which in time of war has been proved essential for the production of highly important munitions.

What has actually happened under this Act I confess I am unable to tell.  Weeks ago I wrote to the President of the Board of Trade asking if, without inconvenience, he could favour me with a general account of what had been done in the matter of issuing licences, and my letter was promised attention, but up to the moment of delivering this address I have had no further reply.  I can only, then, discuss the proposed policy on its theoretic merits.[1] The theoretic issues are fairly clear.  Either the licensing power of the Board of Trade has been used to exclude competitive imports or it has not.  If it has been so used, it is obvious that we have no security whatever for the maintenance of the industry in question in a state of efficiency.  In the terms of the case, it is enabled to persist in the use of plant and of methods which may be inferior to those used in the countries whose competition has been excluded.  Then the very object posited as the justification for the Act, the securing of a thoroughly efficient key industry necessary to the production of munitions, is not attained by the fiscal device under notice.  If, on the other hand, there has been no barring of imports under the licence system, the abstention from use of it is an admission that it was either unnecessary or injurious or was felt to be useless for its purpose.

[Footnote 1:  The promised statistics were soon afterwards sent to Mr. Robertson by the Board of Trade.  They will be found in the Liberal Magazine for September, 1922, p. 348.—­ED.]