Lord Lyons to Sir C. Dilke, M.P.
Paris, June 14, 1881.
I received last evening your letter of the day before, asking me whether I had anything to say on the policy of breaking off the commercial negotiations when you get to work.
I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that there will in all probability be a thorough change of Government in France in the autumn. We might perhaps get a decent treaty from the new Government if they found the negotiations in progress. It might not be so easy to get negotiations reopened if they had once been broken off, and the French had become accustomed to the idea of having the general tariff applied to British goods.
Politically, it would, I think, be a great pity to begin ill with the new Government, and I don't think we could possibly begin well, in the state of feeling which would be produced in this country, and still more I suppose in England, by a commercial rupture.
The majority of the French would be very glad that the general tariff, or still higher duties, should be enforced against English goods, but they would none the less be irritated by our breaking with them.
I confess, too, that I am alarmed, perhaps without sufficient reason, at the effect which may be produced both at home and abroad by the cry in England for retaliation.
My own plan would be, for the present, to pursue the negotiation as seriously and as steadily as is compatible with not committing ourselves to any decidedly objectionable duties so definitely as to be hampered in subsequent negotiations if we find the new Government more fairly disposed towards us.
If there was ever any possibility of concluding a Treaty in time for it to be passed by the Chambers this Session, there is certainly none now. Gambetta wanted to get the question out of the way before the elections; but even if the Treaty were signed, I don't think the Chambers could be induced to consider it under present circumstances. Nor would they, I should think, pass a bill to prolong the existing Treaties.
To my mind, our most prudent course would be to let the new Chambers find the negotiations going on when they meet in the autumn. I don't of course mean that you should go on sitting every week from this time to the autumn: it would suffice that there should not be any adjournment sine die, and that we should not give any ground for an assertion that we are not really willing to conclude even a moderately fair treaty.
Lord Lyons, as has already been stated, was, like almost every British official of the time, a firm and almost bigoted Free Trader; and it is possible that his alarm at the prospect of retaliation was caused by the appearance of the Fair Trade League; that harbinger of Tariff Reform to which somewhat inadequate justice has been rendered by its imitators. But it is surprising to learn of these qualms, when he is found predicting that the smaller countries who were willing and able to retaliate on French goods, would obtain better terms than England. The very different spirit in which the smaller States approached commercial questions with France is shown in the following instructive account of the views of the Swiss Minister at Paris, M. Kern.
Lord Lyons to Sir C. Dilke.
Paris, June 25, 1881.
Last evening, after my letter to you of yesterday had gone, I met Kern, who told me that in the course of the day he had had an interview with M. Tirard, and also one with M. Gambetta. He had, he said, declared most distinctly to both, first, that Switzerland would not sign a Treaty placing her in a less advantageous commercial position than that now existing; and secondly, that if the general tariff were applied to Swiss goods, French goods would be forthwith subjected to duties of precisely the same amount in Switzerland. He had, he said, somewhat surprised M. Tirard by informing him that the Swiss Government had power to impose such duties at once, without waiting for legislative sanction.
The impression left upon Kern's mind by the two interviews was, that as hard a bargain as possible would be driven by France, but that in the end they would rather make moderate treaties than no treaties at all, if they saw that this was the only alternative.
He is going to Berne to confer with his Government, and he says that he is sure they will approve and confirm his language to Tirard and Gambetta.
After these interviews, Kern was very positive that the French Government were making a great fight to justify themselves to the Chambers, but that if the Powers, and particularly England, were firm, the French would yield rather than incur the political and other inconveniences of not making any treaty at all.
I am not so sure as he seemed to be of this, but I think that the French are alive to the political inconveniences of breaking with England altogether; and it might therefore be worthy of your consideration, whether, when you go back to the Articles you reserved in the Tariff, you should not make a last effort to see whether the French cannot be brought to consent to a Treaty which would be better commercially than no Tariff Treaty at all. It might interfere with whatever chance of success such an effort might have, for the French to feel beforehand that they could get out of the political difficulty by signing a simple Most Favoured Nation Treaty.
Nevertheless I am not shaken in my opinion that it would be advisable for you to sign a Most Favoured Nation Treaty, if better may not be, before you break up the Commission, or adjourn it for any long time.
Commercially we had better make sure at once of sharing the concessions which may be made to other Powers under threats of retaliation.
Politically we should, I think, find it most disadvantageous to have even the appearance of being on bad terms with France.
The British Government apparently still entertained the illusion that there were real French Free Traders. M. Challemel Lacour was the chief French Commissioner and Lord Granville welcomed him as a brother Free Trader. His brother Free Trader said it was true that he was Libre-Echangiste, but he was Libre-Echangiste Français, and recognized the necessity of paying due consideration to the interests of native industries. To this chilling response, Lord Granville was forced to retort that he must venture to doubt whether a Libre-Echangiste Français, in His Excellency's acceptation of the term, was not what in England was called a Protectionist. M. Waddington had once stated that he was a Free Trader 'bar cotton,' and whenever the French Radical Parliamentary candidates, who were then perambulating the country in view of an approaching general election, were asked whether they were Free Traders or not, they replied in the affirmative, but qualified by a reserve in favour of French industries which would be ruined by Free Trade. As a matter of fact, the spirit of Protection was becoming more and more ingrained in the French people, and the best chance of getting a reasonable Commercial Treaty lay in the hope that an election would bring Gambetta into power.