The Evening Star MONDAY, APRIL 19, 1876.

Evening Star, Issue 3791, 19 April 1875, Page 2

The Evening Star MONDAY, APRIL 19, 1876.

The results of restriction of trade are beginning to develop themselves in Victoria somewhat prominently, and must necessarily force upon the people a change in their fiscal system. Two principles were adopted some dozen years ago which have proved suicidal in their operation : the one was protection to native industry, and the other .the stoppage of assisted immigration. The one was a scintillation of the agricultural mind, the other an offspring of misdirected trades unionism. Together, they were an embodiment of selfishness—short-sighted, one-sided, and wrong-headed. The professed object of protection was to raise up Home manufactures, to render the Colony indepsndent of foreign countries for supplies, and to become rich by doing everything at Home, and keeping money and gold in the country. The design of stopping immigration was to prevent competition in the labor market, and to secure to those who had by some means or other found their way to the Colony, the monopoly of doing all there was to be done. It is amazing how speciously and insidiously the sophistry worked. Merchants who had grown rich through free and unrestricted commerce, lawyers who had, both in Parliament and out of it, advocated “ free trade,” statesmen who had had every opportunity of gaining information, became infected with the delusion and changed their faith. Thay had for years professed themselves disciples of Adam Smith, aud boasted of their sympathy with Mill, and Cobden, and Bright ; but when some ill-taught boors from Geelong, aided by a stonemason or two and Graham Berry, obtained the popular ear, their faith wavered j and they discovered that truth in an old [country was falsehood in a new, and that a system condemned by experience, exploded by reason, and ruinous in its effects upon work and wages when adopted by large populations, was to prove the philosophers’ stone in small communities, and turn their infant efforts into gold. Some of those waverers have gone to their rest: they have not lived to see the effects of their own want of faith in tiuth. Others still remain to witness the disaster they have invited, but whether they have honesty of purpose to acknowledge their error is doubtful. There is growing up now a strong conviction in the minds of the leading people of Victoria that the protective system must be abandoned. This is, however, very difficult to effect with fairness to those who under its shield have invested capital and entered into heavy engagements, employing large numbers of workmen. Only a few weeks back the Melbourne * Age,’ the representative organ of the restrictionists, gave some elaborate statistics of the success that had attended the operations of some woollen mills, and claimed expressly the credit of their establishment to the restrictive system. Of course this is very easy to assert, whether true or notj for it is quite possible, and highly probable, that instead of two prosperous woollen factories there might

have been many more, had the trade been unfettered. Had immigration been fostered instead of discouraged, there would have been twice the population, well engaged and at good wages, and thus there would have been a wider market and, very possibly, better prices. But whether true or not, the popular theory is that these factories have grown out of the system, and consequently a strong interest has already grown up who imagine they will be ruined by a change of system. It did not need very profound wisdom to perceive that the effect on the revenue must necessarily be disastrous. Frequently as we have pointed to this, it cannot be too often referred to, lest, like the Victorians, looking only at one side of a gaudy phantom, we forgot the evil it conceals. It must be plain that, as a great part of the revenue was derived from Customs duties, if Colonial productions kept foreign goods out of the market, there would be no imports, and consequently no customs* receipts from those goods. This has been the effect of the general consumption of Colonial ale here, and was the reason why the differential duty on distilled spirits was abolished. Our telegrams inform ns of a great falling off in the customs and territorial revenue of Victoria. Translated into understandable English it means that the people are badly off and settlement is at a standstill. Restriction was sown broadcast, and is producing its natural fruit. It is proving that freedom of trade and the introduction of a population of grown up, ready made laborers, capable of going to work at once instead of having to be born, and to grow, and to be taught for some fifteen or twenty years, gives to a country advantages that no nation under different conditions possesses. It produces more in proportion to its population, and consequently attracts more of this world’s wealth to divide amongst its inhabitants. The tendency of restriction is to poverty: that of freedom and immigration to wealth.