PROTECTION V. FREETRADE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1629, 6 August 1887, Page 3

PROTECTION V. FREETRADE

We have m previous articles alluded to the great reaction which is taking place at Home m favour of a return to Protection. This reaction is gradually extending, and its influence is even now beginning to be felt m the colonies. Only the other day our cables informed us that Mr Dibbs, at one time Treasurer of New South Wales and as staunch a Free Trader as any either on this or the other side of the line, had been converted to Protection. After many years of unswerving allegiance to the cause of Free Trade, he has become coyinced that it is, under present circumstances, barren of benecial results. Mr Dibbs says that " under certain conditions Free Trade is the best policy to secure the happiness of the human family, but m this oase it must be universal." Now, without going so far as Mr Dibbs, we may say that we believe that Free Trade would be divested of a great portion of its mischievous effects if it were universal — if every nation were to put it into practice. But for one nation to adopt Free Trade, and open its ports free to the products and manufactures of all the cither nations, while these close their markets to her, is surely the height of folly, as Great Britain has discovered to her cost. ..We do not agree.. with Mr Dibbs ia regarding Free Trade as " the best policy to secure the happiness of the human family," even were it universal. It might suit some countries, but it certainly would not suit that portion oi the human family which claims. Great Britain as their domicile. Its tendency must be to reduces wages to the lowest level. Goods manufactured m a country were wages rule" high coiild c hot successfully compete with those manufactured, where a low rate of .wage obtained. To compete successfully the rates of wages must be assimulated, that is, the wages paid m England must be reduced to that ruling, say, m France, Germany, or Russia. It was with this view that the theory of Free Trade was reduced to practice m the Mother Country — that it was m fact, as we have previously said, conceived of greed and born of selfishness. .Moreover, m addition to reducing wages, we regard Free Trade as having the tendency to lower the standard of excellence m our products, and/w tanto to demoralise the people. . For these reasons we have always been opposed to it, and we sincerely trust that the reaction which is so largely developing itself at Home, will prove successful m secuting a return to Protection. Then again, if Free Trade, under any conditions be the best policy to secure the happiness of the hu/nan family, how comes it that other civliised and enlightened nations have not adopted it? If it be the unmixed good that its disciples would have us believe it to be, one would imagine that the other nations of the world would greedily have appropriated it for their own special benefit. But they have not. Why? Simply because they are too " enlightened." They are sufficiently enlightened to see that, it is absurd to try to induce various countries to adopt one cast-iron policy, and that j each nation must regulate its own I policy, according toils circumstances, requirements, and surroundings. America is reckoned about the smartest nation m creation, yet she has not adopted Free Trade, France has not, Germany has not, m fact not a single nation except our own has. It is the old tale of the monkey and the chestnuts. While for the last forty years they have been pouring m their goods " duty free " into England, they have been virtually closing their markets against Blitish manufactures, and laughing m their sleeves at her. But we are happy m the knowledge that the " re-action " we have alluded to is bearing down all before it, and that it is " Lombard street to a China orange," that within a decade Great Britain will return to the policy of Protection by means of which her greatness was built up. — Mail.