The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1888 Freetrade and Protection

Feilding Star, Volume IX, Issue 88, 25 February 1888, Page 2

The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1888 Freetrade and Protection

The following interesting extract is made from a lecture delivered by Sir Lyon Playpair, subsequent to a visit be paid to the United States of I America where he made a careful : study of both sides. He thus defines [ the difference between Freetrade* and i Protection : — '* When taxes are laid upon the whole people to favour particular classes, such as farmers or manufacturers, then the State is losing its chief function of acting in the interests of all of us, and is specially favouring some of us at the expense of all oii us. That is going back to bad and exploded forms of Government when it favoured class legislation. This is what Protection must always do, and has so conspicuously done in America. There privileged classes have laid a claim to be upheld by the labour and self-denial of other people. We allow ouiy one class of the people in this country to make such a claim, aud that consists of paupers ; and we should be specially jealous to allow any other class to sit on the same plane. Ever since the introduction of Freetrade, 40 years ago, we have laboured to root out the privileges of class, so that all of us might have equal participation in the protection of social order by the expenditure of taxes. The principle of Freetrade is that we should use our property and I the products of our labour as we like, and exchange them when and where \ and with whomsoever we will. Protection, on the other hand, hampers exchanges, regulates prices by tariffs and acts as if commerce meant •>. war of retaliation on other cou u trios. If Protection be uuif er&al, it raises tho the prices of all commodities ; if partial, it forces the State to depart from its only true function of taking care of all of us, in order that it may favour the interests of some of us. Its breakdown in the United States shows conclusively that every unnecessary tax becomes a source of positive injury, for taxation at its best is an evil. If we were all good and virtuous over the world it would not be required ; but , it is a needful evil because a government is necessary to sustain the weak, to protect property, and to preserve the honour of women — in fact, to maintain social order. Protection denies this limited use of government, and believing in the productive power of taxation, is trying to mako something out of nothing. It tries to uphold taxation by taxation, itself by itself ; as sensible an effort as it' you tried to lift yourself by tugging at the straps of your own boots. The development of commerce, like all evolutions, depends on natural j laws, which ought to be left to themselves. By inter- meddling you would be as foolish as the boy who, in his impatience, manipulates a plant with the hope of getting a bud to blossom before its appointed time."