Correspondence.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 139, 8 December 1894, Page 2

Correspondence.

FREETRADE AND PROTECTION IN AMERICA. TO TIIE HDITOR OP THE STAR. Sir,— With regard to the condition of labor in England and America, referred to by Mr Goodbehere, that -was touched upon by me in the previous letter, and space will not admit of dealing at length with this phase. I will just remark, in answer to the jubilant assertion of my cntic, that the condition of the industrial classes m England has materially improved m our day, and thatttiat may be said of almost every other civilised country. Our wants and facilities contmue to expand, but the question of comfort and prosperity is but relative, and if the sooial strife and social discontent, not to mention the increase of suicide, which have developed (since tho time of which Mr Goodbehere writes) into the problems of the day, are to bo taken as a register of the aggregate happiness, then there is grave doubt as to the " improved donditions." It is a question, in the main, however, with which the fiscal laws have little to do, and I am afraid I have been rather led into a digression. I promised in my former letter to show some of the ex» ploded articles of the Freetrade faith, and that is my real object in writing. As space is limited your readers will pardon me, I trust, for adopting a more than usually epigramatic style. Imprint it then. One of the leading articles of Freetrade was that the imports must balance with, or slightly exceed the exports for the national trade to be healthy. The experience of recent years proves this to be an utter fallacy. New Zealand offers a conspicuous refutation of the theory. Daring the past f onr years our balance of exports over imports totals over £10,000,000 - an annual excess of nearly 30 per cent— and is there a Freetrader bold enough to say that that balance is not on the right side? Mill and his contemporaries, judging from apparent results in England, have declared such a state'of things impossible for a length of time and disastrous. Would they maintain that doctrine still ? But for the Protection check the New Zealand figures would show differently : We would be flooded with the cheap labor products of the old world,. One of the greatest writers of the century has said that '*no country ever got manufacturers without Protection." Let New Zealand remove the barrier to-morrow, and she will kindle factory fires in other lands and extinguish her own, and that means sending away more of our money and employment, and goodness knows we have not enough of either as it is. In short the whole fiscal question is a matter of expediency— a proper adjustment of natural conditions. Political economy is only true and useful when it recognises that those conditions differ with different circumstance, and that the law of universal and continuous change ever holds good. I am, etc., Patriot. teilding, 7th December 1894.