COLLAPSE OF FREETRADE IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1647, 27 August 1887, Page 3

COLLAPSE OF FREETRADE IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

We have m former articles referred to the reaction m favor of Protection which has developed itself m the Mother Country, and to its gradual extension to the colonies. After forty years of patient trial of the system, it has been condemned at Home by those who were loudest m its praise when the policy was first inaugurated — by )he very men who then anticipated the most benficial results from its adoption — while evidence is not wanting that eminent colonial statesmen, after long and faithful adhesion to the doctrine of Freetrade, have become convinced that under existing conditions its practice is impossible without entailing disastrous results. Not only have individual colonial statesmen arrived at this conclusion, but Colonial Governments also have had this truth forced upon them. New South Wales has for many years, admittedly, been a Freetrade colony ; m fact, m the hey-day of her prosperity, she was exultingty pointed to by the disciples m that school of politics as a good illustration or what Freetrade did for a colony that embraced its tenets. Since that colony has been " going to leeward- ' so rapidly this exultant eulogising of the wisdom of the New South Wales Government has become ess demonstrative, and recently little of it has been heard. Though ostensibly a Freetrade colony, New South Wales has always taken care to have a little admixture of the Protective leaven m her fiscal policy. Small as this modicum of leaven has been, it is more than would have sufficed m our last Parliament to have ousted any Government who might have had the temerity to propose it. Small, however, though it be it has been productive of such good results that the New South Wales Government last session increased it so very considerably, that it can no longer rank as a Freetrade colony. We wonder what our House of Representatives would have said, or done, if the Hon the Colonial Treasurer Kad embodied m his Tariff proposals such duties as are to come into force m New South Wales on and after the ist October, 1887. Here is the list : — " Butter, id per 1b ; biscuits, other than ship, id per Ib ; candles, per reputed lb, and stcarine, id ; cement, per barrel, 2s ; cheese, bacon, and hams, per lb 26; iron, galvanised, m bars, sheet, or corrugated, 40s; galvanised manufactures (except anchors), 60s ; jams, jellies, and fruit, boiled m pulp, per lb id.; rice per ton, 60s r salt per ton, aos ; sugar, refined, per cwt, 6s 8d ; raw per cwt, 53 ; treacle per cwt, 3s 4d 5 tea per lb, 3d ; timber, dressed, per 100 ft superficial, 3s; do, undressed, per 100 ft superficial, is 6d ; doors, sashes, and shutters, each, 25," Why, if Sir Tulius Yogel had proposed such duties as these the House would have gone starke staring mad. But a vast change has come over public opinion on this question since the House rejected the mild proposals of the Colonial Treasurer last session, and it would not surprise us to find the Parliament which will assemble " for the despatch of business " on the sixth day of October next assenting to if not counselling stronger ones, if necessary.