The Evening Star. FRIDAY, JULY 29, 1870.

Auckland Star, Volume I, Issue 173, 29 July 1870, Page 2

The Evening Star. FRIDAY, JULY 29, 1870.

The protection tariff recently submitted to Parliament has been met with the usual howl —" injustice ;" no objection is so handy; none so intelligible to the meanest capacity; none so adcaptandmn. And, accordingly, whenever it'is proposed to foster any particular production by the temporary imposition of a tax on the imported article, there is a ciy that it is bleeding one citizen to nourish another —in fact robbing Peter to pay Paul. Distasteful as is seeming injustice in legislation, it is incomparably more so if ourselves are the apparent victims of the wrong; for with all respect for our moral sense, we believe the poclcet is more sensitive than the conscience. A " tax on the people's bread," is, of all others, that which is the most irritating to those susceptible to claptrap ; and, considering the circumstances of Auckland as a wheat-eating but not a

wheat-growing province, there is on endless theme for denunciation in the " iniquitous and cruel" tax proposed on " the people's bread." If we were a flour-growing people, it is needles to say that we should look an the matter in a different light, and freetraders would be asked to moderate their zeal, and our people would be as earnest advocates of a tax on corn as are the farmers of Otago. There is no use in our disguising it, a tax on imported breadstuff's is mainly distasteful because we buy bread but don't grow it. But waiving this filip to our disinterested freetrading proclivities, let us enquire wherein consists the injustice of a tax, even on the " people's bread." In looking into the fiscal scheme of the Government we find the gross results not materially altered ; in other words, the gross taxation of'the country under the proposed amendments of the tariff is much the same as before, the duties being simply lifted off one article and placed on another. A man will pay more for his flour, and less for his sugar ; more for bis hay, and less for his weighing-machines. Taken all together he will pay in revenue precisely the same amount, with this only difference, that he will pay it on articles which we should and can produce, and is permitted to purchase as cheaply as he can what New Zealand must import for many years, if not for ever. He may pay a pound more in the twelve months for his flour ; but if he pays a pound less for his sugar, where is the injustice ? It is all very well to fling dust in people's eyes, and ring the changes on sentimental humbug about the " people's bread." But if a man pays four pounds a year in revenue, what does it matter to him if he pays it in buying his sugar or in buying his flour? If fresh taxation were imposed, and more was drawn annually from the pocket by a new and special tax, then there would be grounds for complaint. But no such thing has been attempted; no such thing has been advocated by the friends of protection to our native industries. All that is asked is a revision of the Customs tariff, which will encourage us at nobody's cost to self-reliance and local production. A protective duty on woollen goods imported would raise the price of all woollen goods produced in the country, and so foster our manufactures, while a removal at the same time of the duty, say from tea, may make a family's annual expenditure precisely the same as before the alteration of the tariff. It is hard to tax a man's blankets, and so make it expensive to keep himself warm at night, but by if an adjusted tariff his cotton sheets and counterpanes were cheapened to a like amount, where is the hardship ? The cry of injustice against the protective policy is claptrap and will not bear a moment's investigation." It could be made unjust, but for all the possible evil which may attend it, we are not to hold it responsible. And if taxation must be raised, the imposition of the duties on such imported articles as we can ourselves produce, and the free admission of such as we can never produce, does no wrong to any man and is by far the most ready and legitimate way of fostering the growth of infant industry.,