FREETRADE AND PROTECTION.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 109, 5 November 1896, Page 2

FREETRADE AND PROTECTION.

It is somewhat surprising that there should be a re-action of feeling in England at the present time as regards the blessings of Freetrade. A writer in the Nineteenth Century says : "We are in the full flood tide of Protection re-action, and it is a tide which did not begin to flow yesterday, and shows no signs of ebbing* to morrow." Further on he says : Freetrade is regarded with great and evergrowing disfavor everywhere, and is no longer supreme even in the opinions of Englishmen. The reasons for this change are given. A.t one time in shipping, i i cottons, in cutlery, in hardware, in machinery, England seemed beyond competition. Great is the change today. The competitors who have rejected " the inestimable blessings of freedom of trade " are overtaking England with long strides. Already Germany is abreast of her in the pro* duction of iron and steel ; America has long since passed her, and Belgium is gaining on her rapidly. Even her carrying trade is menaced. She no longer owns the first shipping port in Europe. Liverpool has been passed by Hamburg, and it looks as if it would presently be passed by Ancwerp. Ten years ago Liverpool was the first port in Europe. Now she is the second — soon, apparently to be the third. Freetrade England stands worse than she did twenty-three years ago. No wonder Englishmen are puzzled and angry, and look curiously at the protected foreign countries which are reducing the lead, we still hold so fast. The opinion is gaining ground that the phrase Freetrade has lost its charm and the fact itself » do more sacred than any other part of the political creed to which it owes its origin, and If it is to maintain itself it must show clearly &«$ it is justified by actual rousts at tfee p*e«ent time. It is not to the pur£»se to P^ that it suited England in the fiftte * «* *f» This subject is all the ?°' c ******* I just now in the colonies beJ!** I**1 ** ! of them as are " girdled abput ». ' the crushing steel bands of protection," are looking with anxious eyes to New South Wales where a policy of Freetrade now obtains, and where the experiment so far has proved beneficial to the importer, to the mauufacturer, and to.tho consumer.