Correspondence

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 137, 9 May 1893, Page 2

Correspondence

EMIGRANT AGAIN. TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAII. Sir, — " Colonist "has now shown us his Freetrade hand, and it is Freetrade — with a stiff Customs tariff added to it to keep it from running away. Why, sir, this is a shallower trick than the kite and eagle device; it is like offering us a round square bottle, or a half-bred pure Romney sheep for our glorification. This trifling of his with words will not do. If he is to win his case for Freetrade, he must show us it is free trade he means by that word. Shew us most emphatically that those who work np material for trade would be I benefited by Freetrade ; show us that it would be wise for Tom, the shoemaker, to take smaller wages tc enable him to buy cheaper shoes, in the face of the fact that bj' so doing he would increase the value of real property, shutting himself ont more effectually from the chance of obtaining any share of it, while his butcher's, baker's, and doctor's bills, would probably be as large as ever ; and when the Toms agree to all this, he must ask the farmers to shell out, and make pood the deficiancy caused by Freetrade in the Custom's revenue. As Britons, we have many reasons to be proud of our nation, and may reasonably believe that we are capable of doing, and will do, grander things than we have yet done ; but we belittle ourselves by crediting Capital and Freetrade with our grandest achievements. It is needless to follow " Colonist " through all the caressings he gives to Freetrade and Capital, and folly to note the kicks he gives Liberals for imaginary disrespect shown to these deities of his ; but I may be allowed to ask him to produce the history of British Freetrade that existed ere that event took place ; and to say that he seems to blink at, or be ignorant of, fie havoc that Freetrade has worked in parts of the United Kingdom, and to forget tl al other conntries under trade Protection progress more rapidly in the growth of cities and reclamation of waste lands, than does Great Britain under Freetrade. The " better wages " obtained by British workmen is ths M red clout " Freetrade put on their knees, but it is now being torn away, and the rupture between capital and labor is greater there than in any other country. " Colonist " has attempted to kindle a political light of his own in the columns of the Star, to guide us in choosing our member at the nest general election, but, judging from appearances, it is likely to end in a fizzle. He did not intend the light to be very clear, iust a glimmer among the flax, to show us dimly two political figures crouching under the spiky bludes one of which he brands " Christian" and " Brotherly," the other one " Changer of black into white" and " Guller of tho people." II we go up to see how his " boggies" are dressed, we find one with a Freetrade hat on him, Customs duties marked on its back brim, over its body flaps an old English blanket, marked " Brotherhood," but thia brotherhood is not founded on unity ol religious belief, on good morals, justice, superior intelligence, or on reason, but on the shibboleth of real estate. To those having that figment of wisdom they give two votes, those who have it not must take a lower room, which means : " The poor cannot enter our kingdom of heaven." Yet this is a very christian party. The other one's head is protected by a cap and his body b.y a cloak of New Zealand tweed, branded of course; but, I light a match to look at a picture bound to his waist and meanly turned in to his back. It is a beautiful picture of a labour bureau and shining railway trains beside it, under gas burners, poor men are leaping aboard, trains are steaming away with them to where they find employment ; and there stands on the platform a grand young man who, with his bare hands, lifts the hard knobby taxes from off farmers' and others' backs and throws them into ghmpsey chariots of large-estate men. Yet the party owning the tweed garment and this picture is a guller of farmers and working people, and his Sunday name is " Anarch." I begin to think that there are different breeds of gulls and gullers, and I say to Whitey Black ; there are two human characters in the world which frighten me more than earthquakes, or Diabolus do6s. One is the large estate man, the other is the degraded poor man, they are danger signals, and you do your best to make both characters scarce. Man were you ever at Galilee ? You are wrongly branded, "Anarch" is not your name, but " Excelsior" is. J am, etc., Emigrant.