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Show j COMMERCE WITH PHILIPPINES. I A good deal has been made recently ; by tlmse who oppose the bringing into I this Country, free of duty, of Philippine i sugar and tobacco, of the facl thai the Philippine assembly a' Manila is iv I moo St nil ing on this proposition and de-I de-I ploring the prospective loss of revenue. It was uoi easy to nndei stand precisely what rhe Philippino legislative body was complaining about until the fact developed that the new tariff bill pro poses to abolish all duty o imports from the United States to lhe Philippino Philip-pino Islands. That of course would deprive de-prive the Philippine government of the revenue from customs duties whicai, so far. has provided the funds for Hindi ng (lie insular government. Naturally the Filipinos do not want to be cut off from this revenue and at the same time bo restricted and limited in their ex ports to the United States. If there is to be absolute free trade between the United States and the Thilippiues. they very .justly say. there should re-ciprocally re-ciprocally be absolute, free trade from the Philippines to the United States. Nothing ia plainer, nor more .lust. Ihan this If i.- clearly unfair to compel the Philippines to receive free of duty any exports which may be sent from the United States, and at the same time to deny the Filipinos the right of unrestricted unre-stricted export to the United Stales. If there is to be a limitation in the one case there should be in the other. The Philippine assembly is exactly right on this proposition. I: should not be deprived de-prived of the customs revenue derived heretofore upon imports from the Lnncn states, uuiess reciprocal mm: inhabitants of the Philippine Islands are allowed to ship their products to the L'nited States with a corresponding freedom. By the peace treaty with Spain in 1899, the United Stales obligated itself it-self for ten years to allow imports from Spain to the Philippines on the same basis as imports from the United State- It was not competent, therefore, there-fore, until this vcar, for the I'nircd States to establish free trade between this country and the Philippines, unless un-less we were willing al?o to allow Spain to have the like free trade. This could not be granted, of course, and so the tariff duties were kept. on. Now. however, it is proposed to take the duties off altogether from all imports into the Philippines from rhe United Slates, but to allow the Philippines only on-ly restricted free trade with this coun try. As n proposition it is manifestly one-sided. ll is impossible to sustain an argument in favor of it on any f.ii; or reciprocal basis. The fact that the Philippines would be deprived of this tariff revenue on iuiports from the United States, would be for a time a financial blow more or less severe But local revenues could bo built up precisely as Territorial revenues bavg been built up in the various Territories of the United States, by taxes ou property, by ii censes, and by various of the usual devices for raising public revenue. And inasmuch as the Philippines would be at liberty to provide this taxation for themselves without any interposition pi the United States, the amount of money that they Would raise from lo cal taxation would depend entirely up ou their own disposition with respeet to the imposing of local taxes The United Stales would intervene only m ease of some unconstitutional or op-pressive op-pressive irapositioa of burdens, such as is uot in the least to be anticipated. But it is a clear ease that if the United States i- going to deprive the inhabitants of the Philippines of the revenue derived heretofore from custom.- duties on imports from the United States into those islands, it is incumbent upon the United States to give the Philippines reciprocal free trade with this country. That the proposed pro-posed taking off of the duties from im ports of tiie United States going into the Philippines would be a tremendous stimulus to trade between ihi.s country and those islands is very clear. But. it is not clear why this should be imposed im-posed upon the Philippines with so little reciprocal advantage to them, nor is it clear how they could raise the monev after a few vearr, of Mich bleed ing to buy much from the. United States, "i from anj other portion of I the WOTld. |