The Feilding Star, Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. FRIDAY, JUNE 28, 1895. THE NEW TARIFF.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 304, 28 June 1895, Page 2

The Feilding Star, Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. FRIDAY, JUNE 28, 1895. THE NEW TARIFF.

Many people were alarmed at the prospect of the Tariff Commission recommending to the Government a widely protective one, but, if we may judge by the Post, such alarm is foundationless, so far as the Commission is concerned. Apropos of the proposal of the Government to set up a Tariff Committee the Post considers that Ministers are not satisfied with what the Commissioners have done, and do not intend to be at all bound by their conclusions. The fact is, we believe, that Ministers arc terribly disappointed with the Commissioners' report. It is on entirely different lines from what they expected. The Commissioners were carefully selected in the belief that tliey would make a redhot report in favour of Protection. Had they done this Ministers could, of courac, have set aside the report, or, by modifying its recommendations, have gamed credit from the Freetrade Party. The Commissioners have, we believe, shown an altogether unexpected and quite undesired aptitude for the work entrusted to them. They have managed to fairly digest a vast amount of incongruous material, and have, there is reason to believe, produced a very moderate, business-like report, showing how tariff anomalies may be remedied and cluth-s altered to what they deem the public advantage. This report is most disappointing to Ministers. It is based only to a very moderate extent on Protective lines, and it urges the reduction or abolition of the duties on a much larger number of articles than it proposes should pay new or increased duties. Two or three of its recommendations may be open to ob jection as founded on Protective principles, but the bulk of them will, we believe, be found to tend rather in the direction of Freetrade. Tliis is not at all what Ministers expected or desired, and so a Committee is to be set up in the hope that it will revise the Commissioners' work in such a way that the recommendations for increased Protection may be accepted, and those in favour of Freetrade be ignored Ministers want the Committee as a buller between themselves and the Commissioners.