GUARDING THE TARIFF SCHEDULE.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 246, 25 October 1901, Page 3

GUARDING THE TARIFF SCHEDULE.

Tiik Foileml Cabinet's anxiety about the i taiitY was not rostriotcil t,p the task of | drawing it up or the question of its recop- j tion by the country. They had to take elaborate precautions against any prema- j turn disclosure of the nciv duties, for that ! might have meant serious loss. They j could not prevent Sydney merchants lay- j ing in large stocks of articles- in anticipation of the tariff imposing heavy duties on them, but they could and did compel them j to work in the dark, not knowing what | articles would be taxed or to what extent. To Mr Kingston fell the privilege of intro- | .lucing the new tariff to the most crowded \ .House that was over seen in an Alls- j trillion Parliament. To Mr Kingston, therefore, with one accord his colleagues I in the Cabinet gratefully relinquished the duty of guarding the precious schedule. The fact that the Minister of Customs has had to go away for a holiday may not be unconnected with the weight of responsibility that rested upon him. Nothing was printed for a ! long time, and only Ministers possessed i type-written copies of the draft schedules, j .In process of time the articles to be taxed j were agreed upon and elassitied, and the j Government printer " had the list set up j in odds and ends so that no compositor should get an idea of the whole scheme." 1 Even then the duties to he imposed were not tilled in. This was done by pen and ; ink as the tariff was discussed at Cabinet j meetings. The completed draft was kept back until the last moment, and “ finally the rates were set up in groups without any indication being given of what article they referred to. and the complete • form ' for the schedule was made up by the most trusted employees of the Government Printing Office. A sufficient number of copies were struck off to be sent to the various Custom houses in the Commonwealth, and a record of every one distributed was kept." All these precautions notwithstanding. Ministers are said to have had two dreadful scares during the last fortnight. Their responsibility had made them nervous, and when one day a count of the copies of the tariff showed one to be missing, they went to bed. after a fruitless search, in an agony of anxiety, and opened their morning papers with apprehension, lest they should find that the missing copy had been given to one of t'ne newspapers. In the end. they found that the copies had been wrongly counted, and that the secrets of the new tariff were still their own. The same thing happened later on. and the Federal Cabinet must have felt distinctly relieved when the morning of the fateful day arrived with the tariff still unguessed by the public.