ABSTRACT
The object of the legislation had been the protection of the British cotton-linen industry against the all-cottons of India. In 1774 the Government sanctioned the new manufacture of all-cottons, greatly to the dissatisfaction of numbers of Lancashire manufacturers, whose policy had been to throw every possible obstacle in Richard Arkwright’s way. In the course of the nineteenth century a remarkable change took place in the direction of British exports of cotton goods. Cotton grown within the empire was taxed less than foreign cotton, and between 1821 and 1828 the cotton of any British colony or plantation in America and of Malta, if imported direct, was admitted free. In Switzerland no sort of tariff barrier existed prior to 1851. Most of the British Colonies tax some classes of imported cotton goods, but since 1903 the South African Customs Union and Canada have accorded preferential treatment to British cottons of the taxed classes and made provision for reciprocal concessions in inter-colonial trade.
