Book XII: My Immediate Programme, Chapter I: A Simple Programme

The sugar precedent—A single question—Suppression of taxes on goods of extra European origin imported from a European country.

I will now sketch the programme which I should like put in operation next session, one much simpler to realise than that for which I worked between 1897-1902. Indeed, every one told me at the time that I was breaking my head against a stone wall in attacking the sugar question; most of the delegates at the Brussels Conference thought that it would end in nothing, and yet March 5, 1902, crowned it with success.

I am not now going to fight the agrarians affected by the duties on wheat and meat; I am only trying to prepare public opinion by proving to the small owners that, far from gaining anything, they are being hoodwinked, removing the scales from the eyes to show them that while they eat wheat they do not grow and meat that they do not pasture they are paying a tax to the landowners who have monopolised their food supply.