PROTECTION FROM MR DEVERELL'S STANDPOINT.

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 34, 6 September 1892, Page 2

PROTECTION FROM MR DEVERELL'S STANDPOINT.

TO THE EDITOR OF THK STAJI. Sir, — You are quite right Mr Deverell, and I am able fully to agree with you that " drapers " and "other tradesmen," " bootmakers " (boots again), and manufacturers who recklessly make bad debts, and also all tradesmen who sell their goods below cost price " require Protection," but the uiodo by which they should be protected is a question for -their relations and friends to decide, provided it is not done at the public expense. With respect to the rest ot Mr Deverell's letter, published in Saturday's Star, I can only repeat what I said relative to one of his previous letters, that it is such " as no man can understand." After Mr Deveroll's unintelligible effusions it is somewhat refreshing to read the letters you have published from my friend (if he will permit me so to call him) Mr H. C. Wil* son, although his letters appear to show signs that he is only a half-hearted Freetrader; a thorough Freetrader does not admit the word Protection (as applied to foster any manufactures) into his vocubalary, and although he freely recognises the necessity of Customs duties for the purposes of revenue he denies the justice of fixing thos6 duties on any article expressly for the benefit of the manufacturers at the expense of the people, and of all articles of consumption (except food) the people, as I haye said on a previous occasion, ought to be enabled to purchase their boots and shoes in the cheapest market. I am very pleased to notice from articles and correspondence in the London Times that the party of rabid protectionists in America is likely to be overthrown at the forthcoming election for the President, that in the opinion of those best able to judge it is a matter of almost mathematical certainty that in the course of the next four or five years Protection will be a thing of the past in America, and that the adoption of Freetrade in America will inevitably be followed by a similar policy throughout the whole of Continental Europe, if not by all civilized nations. I am, etc., Saml. Goodbehere.