A memorable event in the history of Free Trade in England is the withdrawal this year from public life of the Right Honourable W. E. Gladstone, whose name will for ever be associated with those of Richard Cobden and Sir Robert Peel in the great work to which this Club is devoted. Your Committee have great pleasure in stating that they have special permission from Mr. Gladstone to publish and circulate, as a Cobden Club Leaflet, the original text of his letter of the 22nd March last, addressed to the distinguished French Honorary Member of this Club, M. Léon Say, who, as President of the Political Economy Club of Paris, had sent to Mr. Gladstone an address of regret from that Club on the right honourable gentleman's retirement from political life. Your Committee have ordered the printing and circulation of a hundred thousand copies of the letter as No. 102 of our Leaflets. As the letter was written by Mr. Gladstone in English, while the text which appeared in most of the English newspapers was a translation from the French version as it appeared in the Paris newspapers, the members of the Club will be glad to have the exact English text of this interesting epistle reproduced in this Report, from an official copy kindly furnished by Mr. Herbert Gladstone. The letter runs as follows: 10, Downing-street, Whitehall, 22nd March, 1894. My dear M. Léon Say,-I am alike touched and gratified by the letter which I have had the honour to receive from you and your distinguished coadjutors. I gladly use a small portion of my impaired eyesight, and the date which for the last time appears at the head of my letter, to express my gratitude. I must also express my admiration of the courage and fidelity of those who still continue in France to adhere to the principles of commercial legislation which I have the honour and pleasure to hold in common with you. It is matter of sincere concern to me, in retrospect, to measure the ground which has been lost within the last twenty-five or thirty years with respect to this great subject, both on the continent of Europe, and among the larger portion of what is commonly termed the Anglo-Saxon race. My regret is not only on the ground of the material loss incident to the system of Protection; but also because of the power of Free Trade to promote that good-will and amity which we must all earnestly desire to see prevailing between the different countries of the world. On this great subject my own country now remains almost a solitary witness to what was once regarded as established economic truth. Will she persist in this mission, in despite of example from abroad and of wavering or dissentient parties and classes at home? I not only hope but believe that she will, and will patiently await the day when experience, combined with reasoning, shall anew make willing converts to a beneficial creed. In the meantime we have to be patient. I remain, with renewed thanks, and with much regard, my dear M. Léon Say, faithfully and sincerely yours, W. E. GLADSTONE. To M. Léon Say. Your Committee has appointed M. Edouard Sève, Belgian Honorary Member of the Club, and Belgian Consul-General in this country, to represent the Club at the International Congress at Antwerp on Customs Legislation and the Regulation of Labour. The Cobden silver medals offered for competition on Political Economy at Calcutta University, for 1891 and 1892, have been awarded respectively to Mr. Bipin Cihari Sen and Mr. Anukul Chandra Ray; and the siver medal at Bombay University for 1893 has been awarded to Mr. Narayan Vishunath Mandlik, B. A. The triennial prize of £60 at Victoria University, Manchester, was not awarded, none of the essays sent in having been considered by the examiners to be of sufficient merit to justify the award. In connection with the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching, prizes of two guineas each have been awarded to Mr. Robert I. Morgan and Miss Kathleen G. Patch; and like prizes have been awarded at the City of London College to Mr. W. P. Jobson; and at the Working Men's College, Great Ormondstreet, to Mr. Thomas Ellis Naylor, compositor. Book prizes to the value of £7 have been awarded at Owens College, Manchester, to Mr. James Allen, Mr. James Ellis, Mr. F. M. Saxelby, and Mr. T. R. Dootson. In December of last year, the Committee decided to offer a prize of two guineas in connection with the lecture courses on Political Economy of the Local Examinations of the Cambridge and Oxford Universities; and in the case of the Oxford Local Examinations the prize was won by Mr. George Lewis, of Stockton. The award of the prize in connection with the Cambridge Local Examinations has not yet been made. The following is a list of the members of the Club whose death has been reported to the Committee since the last Annual Meeting:-The Conde de Moser (Portugal), Sir W. Fox (New Zealand), Mr. J.. M. Osborn (U.S. America), the Hon. Charles Stuart Mein (Queensland), Sir John Robertson (New South Wales), the Hon. Alexander Stuart (New South Wales), the Hon. R. P. Bruce, Mr. H. W. West, Q.C., Mr. David Dudley Field (U.S. America), M. Auguste Couvreur, of Belgium, Mr. Alexander Crum, and Lord Chief Justice Coleridge. Special votes of regret were passed on the deaths of M. Couvreur and Lord Coleridge. The following is a complete list of the publications added to the Club's stock for distribution since the last annnal meeting: Ready Reckoner of the World's Exchanges." (Sampson Low.) 13 copies. Report of the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of Members of the Cobden Club, 1893." 22,000 copies. "A Study of Small Holdings." By W. E. Bear. (Cassell.) 50,000 copies. England's Foreign Trade in the Nineteenth Century: its Economic and Social Results." By Arthur L. Bowley, B.A., Cobden Prizeman, Cambridge, 1892. (Sonnenschein.) 13 copies. Tariff Reform." Vol. 6. No. 3, Vol. 6. No. 3, containing "Edward Atkinson's Tariff Plan" (presented by New York Reform Club). 100 copies. "Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life." By G. J. Holyoake. (Fisher Unwin.) 14 copies. The Liberal Magazine. 6 copies monthly. House of Lords Paper. No. 214. (Lord Onslow's Committee's Report on Foreign Meat.) 3 copies. Richard Cobden." From "The World's Workers Series." (Cassell.) 1,000 copies, in addition to copies previously distributed. .. Financial Reform Almanack, 1894." (Heywood.) 26 copies. "The Tyranny of Socialism." By M. Yves Guyot. (Sonnenschein.) 10 copies. The Life of Samuel Bamford." (T. Fisher Unwin.) 100 copies. "The Labour Movement." By L. T. Hobhouse. (Fisher Unwin.) 100 copies. The English Peasant." By Rd. Heath. (Fisher Unwin.) 100 copies. "The Progress of the Foreign Trade of the United Kingdom, and of other Countries, in Recent Years." (Queen's printers.) 12 copies. The Economic Review for April, containing an article, "A Defence against Sweating." By Hy. W. Wollf. (Rivington & Co.) 3 copies. "The Taxation of Ground Values." By J. Fletcher Moulton. (Page & Pratt.) 100 copies. "Agricultural Banks, their Object and their Work." By Henry W. Wolff. (Agricultural Banks Association.) 50 copies. Horticultural Review. 14 copies weekly. Total number of books, pamphlets, etc. (exclusive of leaflets), added to the Club's stock since last Annual Meeting, 73,680. The following new Leaflet has been printed :-No. 102, "Mr. Gladstone's Latest Letter on Free Trade." 100,000 copies. MR. G. W. MEDLEY. Mr. G. W. MEDLEY: I beg to move the adoption of the report just read. You will have gathered from it that as regards the Club and its operations the twelve months just past have been very tranquil, and that there is nothing very special to note except, perhaps, the foreshadowing which the report affords of an attempt to bring about a commercial union of the various members of the empire based on Protection. It will be time to deal with such proposals when they are seriously made. In the meanwhile I will, with your permission, make some observations which have been suggested by the somewhat extraordinary situation in which we now find ourselves. And, as the subject demands precision of statement, and I have to give some quotations, I have taken the liberty of putting what I have to say into writing. A PAUSE IN THE STRUGGLE. The fact is that we have arrived at a remarkable conjuncture in the Free Trade controversy in this country. There is a pause in the struggle. For two years past there has been no organised attack by our Protectionists. As you have been reminded, the last one was made at the Congress of Chambers of Commerce of the Empire in 1892, when it was sought to fiscally bind together the United Kingdom and her colonies and dependencies by means of differential duties against the rest of the world, which, if carried out, would be nothing less than a return to the policy which had been discarded fifty years ago. The resolution proposed by me at that Congress was carried by 47 Chambers against 34, and the attempt was defeated. Since then perfunctory Protectionist resolutions have been passed here and there, some desultory speeches have been made in the House of Commons by incorrigibles such as Mr. James Lowther and Mr. Howard Vincent, and lately we find Mr. Cecil Rhodes, of South African fame, endeavouring to lure the Home Government into consenting to the establishment, in Matabeleland and Mashonaland, of what is termed, as regards import duties, a preferential right in favour of Great Britain and the Cape Colony. The Colonial Office, however, in reply said: The Home Government and Parliament have in the interests of the people of this country consistently refrained for many years from all attempts to either nurse, fetter, or interfere with the free action and development of its commerce by Protective duties, whether upon Colonial or upon Foreign goods, and there are at present no signs that this policy is likely to be abandoned. The truth is that facts are too strong for our opponents; the heart has been taken out of them; the lower the prices of wheat and other necessaries of life go the more absurd appear the old arguments, and the more impossible it becomes to persuade the masses to consent to the raising by artificial means of the prices of what they have to buy. If they look abroad in the hope of finding there some new argument derived from comparing the condition of Protectionist nations with that which exists here, they are obliged to contemplate one sad scene of economic desolation, while at home their views are repudiated by their titular chiefs. When Lord Salisbury says, as he did in May last at Trowbridge, Wiltshire, to the farmers: No doubt I shall be told by adverse critics that I am adverse to Free Trade, and that I am proposing a duty upon corn. I beg to nail that lie upon the counter before it is uttered. I know that Free Trade is, and must be, the policy of this country, and it must be for this reason that though it has been desperately severe upon that large class of producers who belong to agriculture, it has been very favourable to that very much larger class of persons who are the consumers of this country, and the consumers have the right to have, they have the power to have, the determining voice in this matter. Do not therefore mistake me in what I say by supposing I imagine that Free Trade can be reversed. I know that Protection is dead and cannot be revived— When the leader of the party which by tradition is Protectionist makes such an admission, and in doing so uses language which would grace a Cobden Club pamphlet, we may indeed come to the conclusion that Protection is dead and cannot be revived. That is the state of matters at present, and that is the reason why the country has not heard so much of late about the Cobden Club as it did a few years ago. Should the enemy, however, pluck up courage some day to make a serious assault on Free Trade, depend upon it that the Club will be ready as of yore to go out into the open and to do battle. TRADE DEPRESSION. Let us now take a glance at the general economic condition at home and abroad. At the present moment there exists throughout the world a profound depression of trade. The time at my command precludes me from anything more than a brief mention of some of the principal causes which, in my humble opinion, have combined to bring about a condition of affairs which is quite unprecedented. The first contributing cause I shall mention is the fact that for the last twenty years. we have been involved in an economic revolution which has not |