The Evening Star THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1874.

Evening Star, Issue 3640, 22 October 1874, Page 2

The Evening Star THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1874.

Mr Wales has at length thrown some light upon the political opinions he has formed, or which are in course of formation in his mind ; for it cannot be said that his political education is by any means complete. Many of his theories are crude, although, with some exceptions, they trend in a right direction. There was not anything new in what Mr Wales said. He told his hearers what they pretty well knew ; but on some subjects, on which it is highly desirable our representatives should hold clear and decided views, he was somewhat foggy. We do not consider that he has mastered the subjects, of borrowing for investment in reproductive works, of immigration, of free trade, or of a sound land system ; although he is somewhat nearer the mark on the lust than on the other three. When we ara told that “ we are getting near the limits of safety,” what does it mean 1 No merchant considers that he is out of his depth in entering into engagements that he has every reason to believe he will be prepared to meet, and that hold out a prospect of handsome profit. If Mr Wales has the idea that our public works in progress are all that will be needed, he little knows the laws or history of national development. The limit of safety is necessity. When a railway, a dock, a breakwater, a bridge, or a road is no longer needed, we shall have arrived at the “ limits of safety ” ; but so long as directly or indirectly any one of them is requisite to develop industry, and will more than return interest on the outlay, “ the limits of safety ” are not reached. We may possibly reach the limits of our credit; but even that very much depends upon the manner in which loans are laid out. If .they are husbanded with cai’e and judiciously expended, every penny rendered productive will give confidence in further investment. We may go too fast; but there is not much danger of that so long as our main lines of communication are unfinished. That done, the feeders may be left for future consideration. As to free emigration, too, we think Mr Wales is mistaken. It does not follow because in the beginning of a system errors have been made that the system itself is bad. The profit on the labor of every immigrant, both to himself and the country, does much more than repay the cost of his passage in twelve mouths ; and in three years the whole cost of his passage is recouped to the Governm snt in his contributions to the revenue. We know of no better investment. Mr Wales, perhaps, has a right to condemn some of the emigrants as being unsuitable. We have no doubt some of them should have been sent back again at the cost of the agents who selected them ; it would have been a good lesson to them as to their duties. But the lesson we are taught is to employ respectable and trustworthy agents, and not to turn our revenge upon ourselves. Mr Wales’s remedy reminds one of the old joke of “ cutting off our noses to be revenged on our faces.” We need a good class of immigrants, and they are cheap at the cost o f their passages ; an indifferent class is dear if they give a premium to come. With regard to revenue duties, free trade, and protection, Mr Wales has evidently much to learn. When he said he would raise the revenue of the countiy by direct taxation, no doubt he enunciated a fiscal system, that if adopted and levied equitably on all classes, in proportion to their ability to bear it, would be the fairest, cheapest, and most productive. If every man paid directly to the revenue what he now pays indirectly, there would be great saving in the cost of collection, and a large army of

revenue officers now withdrawn from reproductive employment would be adding to the general wealth, through their labor taking a more profitable direction. The cost of living would be much reduced, and trade would be freed from many vexatious fetters that now hamper and restrict it. But the difficulties in the way are so great, and men are so much more willing to pay what they cannot reckon than a positively named amount, that although every well-informed statesman knows the truth of the matter, he would be a bold perhaps a rash man—who, in the present state of society, tried the experiment. The strangest view expressed by Mr Wales was that while he would advocate direct taxation, he at the same time leans towards “ protection.” How, under such arrangements, would he manage the matter ? Even the most rabid protectionist never contemplates any other way of creating a monopoly for the few at the cost of the many

than by import duties; and as MiWales proposes to abolish them he would have no means of excluding outside manufactures except by an army of preventive men. It would be really a profitable lesson to the country to try such *n experiment: the actual cost of exclusion would be seen, and that, added to the rise in price for the purpose of. enabling a few men to live by a calling not suited to our means of prosecuting it, would show that the cheapest plan would be to give them pensions not to work, and to buy our goods in the cheapest and best markets. We have again and again gone carefully into the statistics of protected trades, and have invariably arrived at the . conclusion that such a plan would be wiser than a system of protection. It would moreover be straightforward : like Mr Wales’s taxation scheme, we should be doing “ directly ” what the protectionist goes round about to do, and we should know what we paid—which under a system of protective duties we ,do not. For our own parts we think this view well worthy his consideration; for there is no reason why his argument is not equally applicable to the one .circumstance as the other. As to the land question he is before his time : society has not got its eyes open yet, and we fear when they have learnt to see, it will be too late.