The Evening Star FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1871.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2683, 22 September 1871, Page 2

The Evening Star FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1871.

As might have been expected, the Imperial Government hesitates to sanction the Colonial proposal to enter into separate fiscal arrangements with other countries. It could hardly be otherwise, for no nation can be expected to allow a dependency to confer special trading advantages denied to the Mother Country herself, or contrary to the relations existing between the Mother Country and the foreign contracting power. It would be very convenient for us in the Colonies to be able to consider ourselves, and, still more, to be considered by the world, dependent or independent of Great Britain as suits our convenience. But unfortunately we can only be one or the other. There are drawbacks to either condition, but the benefit of connection with Great Britain, in our view, preponderates far beyond anything that could be gained by separation ; and so long as we remain connected, we must be content not to expect to be allowed to enter into separate treaties. If the Horae Government enter into a commercial treaty with another power, its pro visions" relate to the Empire as a whole, unless the specific conditions were to be expressed that each Colony will be allowed to make its own arrangements a stretch of liberty which we scarcely think likely for years to come. If therefore, according to diplomatic phraseology, a country is placed on an equal commercial footing with the “ most favox’ed nations,” whether their goods enter London, Melbourne, or Dunedin, no differential duties can be permitted. Eor our own parts we cannot well see how it could be otherwise. Looked at in a proper light, it is a very clumsy, unequal, and consequently unjust plan to raise revenue by imposition of duties on imports; and its injustice and folly are intensified when in addition to laying the heaviest burdens upon those least able to bear them, the tariff is made an engine of warfare ininflict as positive mutual injury upon rival countries, as material warfare, less the death of individuals, would cause. The matter bears a very different character when it is merely a mutual agreement between Great Britain and her Colonies. It assumes then the shape of local taxation. The goods of the Mother Country may be taxed, but not more highly than those from other countries, and liberty to impose duties is conceded on the same principle that one part of the Empire may tax the products of another for local purposes. These are internal arrangements —market dues, if we like to call them so suicidal enough very often; that is to say, suicidal in tendency, for it will be many years before their folly will be learnt by the distress they will bring upon the Colony adopting that policy. Before that happens, it may be, that cultivated brains will have led to wiser methods of nations, and colonies, dealing with each other. The Francises, Berrys, and Batiigatks, will have been superseded by a more advanced and better instructed race of politicians, and the working men will have learnt what they are sadly in the dark about—their true interests. That is for the future; all we can do for the present, as pioneers, is to labor for the spread of truth and sound knowledge in the full conviction that others will reap the fruit, the seeds of which we have sown. There could be no doubt about the consent of the Home Government to a Customs’ Union and uniform tariff’ amongst the Australian Colonies. If each separate Colony is permitted to levy its own scale ot import duties, there could be no reasonable objection raised to a uniform rate being agreed to by a federation of them. Such a plan involves no departure from the principle of local taxation. It would, afterall, only be an exercise of the right already acknowledged of fixing such a scale of duties as is considered necessary, and adopting the least expensive plan of collecting them. We, however, have not yet seen a proposal that seemed to confer equal advantages upon all the Colonies. Their requirements are so diverse and their circumstances so varied, that a taiiff very suitable to one would be unsuited to the condition of the rest. Hew Zealand’s expences in proportion to population have been exceptionally heavy ; and on account of the nature of the outlay, they have been less conducive to the development of resources than the investments on improvement in Victoria and New South Wales. A better day has dawned upon us; but even yet the cost of internal defence is a great drawback. This will be in all probability lessened year by year, and if the Maori population could be brought to worjr steadily and intelligently, the disadvantage would be more than counterbalanced by the supply of labor, and an increase of revenue in the North Island. Were these secured, it is quite possible that I

at no distant date such inter-colonial arrangements might be effected as would economise the collection of the revenue, and still more probably tend to prevent that extensive smuggling which there is every reason to believe is acting so detiimentally upon the revenue, and which would be more easily dealt with by strict supervision at each end of a smuggling voyage, than now, where imperfect precautionary measures are only adopted at the termination. At present such a union seems unlikely also, because of the jealousies between the Colonies. Each apparently wants to keep the other poor, and to get rich by trading with it. Common sense surely seems confined to the counting house, in which the theory is, that rich customers are to be preferred to poor ones. Transfer a merchant to the legislature and he forgets this, and seems to think the trade of 200,000 people is to be conducted on a different principle. It is time the matter was better understood. The extent of trade of a country is the sum of the transactions of all the traders in it, and requires to be based on precisely the same principles as the most intelligently conducted business in it. Lord Kimberly is right—the principles of free trade alone are conducive to permanent commercial prosperity. Free trade extends markets and mutually enriches the nations adopting it. There are better and sounder ways of establishing and extending trade and manufactures than protective or difterential duties there cannot be worse.