PROTECTION.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3905, 25 January 1884, Page 4

PROTECTION.

The Australasian says:—Some of our * local politicans who mvear by Mr Henry George on the land questions will bo mther disposed, avg fancy, to tuke umbrage at him, on account of his views with respect to protection. In an article on '' Overproduction," •which appears iv tlio North American Review, he ridicules that bugboar oi' the partisans of ■ scarcity and monopoly, and then goes on to expose what ho calls " the fallacies of protection." lie tolls his readers that reduced production, low wages, and diminished profits nre the results of thotso restrictions which unwiHo legislation imposes upon freedom of exchange; and ho reminds thorn also that. taxes upon tho exchange of commodities are as much .taxes upon the production of commodities as taxes directly levied upon production," and that this is a system of taxation which " creates monopolies." In conclusion, lie admonishes his countrymen that the only thing needed to restore the industrial organism of tho United States to a sound and healthy condition, is freedom. "Idle labor, wasting capital, the glut of markets, the co-exintence of poverty and of tho unused wealth, are the results of restrictions •which prevent the freo circulation of productive forces." Of nourso, there is nothing new in this, nothing- that has not been said before by tho greatest authorities on economic science in all parts of tho world, but coming from a writer who is regarded by numbers of persons as a political oracle, itwill probably carry conviction to tho minds of Boinu who would bo otherwise inaccessible to argument.