PROTECTION: IS IT DESIRABLE?

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1951, 26 May 1880, Page 4

PROTECTION: IS IT DESIRABLE?

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PKBBB. Sib, —How would it do to take a vote of the people throughout New Zealand, yea or nay, on the interrogative—Protection : Is it desirable ? That is, is it desirable that protection should be accepted as the policy of this country. If the voice of the people be the voice of God, why should we not take steps to have the popular expression upon this most important matter. The present time seems to be moat opportune to have the question settled one way or the other. Almost every newspaper in the colony has lately given its own particular views of the subject. Each ot them appears to have considered the doctrine of protection of sufficient importance to justify the agitation of public opinion in reference to it, and their correarespond ence columns, your own as much so as any, have almost daily teemed with letters from the people for and against that doctrine. To take a vote upon it would be a little expensive, but the result would be invaluable both for present use and as a record of the people’s views of this vital subject in political economy at this era of the colony’s history. Individually I have no intention of boring you with my very crude notions of what is best for us as a young colony. So much has been written in your own columns in deprecation of protection, and so many arguments made on that side which, upon common sense grounds, appear quite incontrovertible, as to almost have forced me into the position of helpless acquiescence. Indeed, as a theory, protection appears to be a very delusion and a snare. Has it, however, been so in practice ? If it ia such a br. ak upon the wheels of a nation’s progress as it has been represented to be, what can we make of the admittedly great progress made by the United States of America in respect to the establishing of manufactories of every kind ? To what extent are the tanneries, the boot factories, the hosiery factories, clothing factories of every kind, factories for cutlery and hardware, for mechanical and farming implements, for the manufacture of locomotives, railway carriages, woodwork and notions of all sorts, the watch factories (now becoming unrivalled for their workmanship) and the thousand and one great labor employing institutions found in all parts of that country —to what extent, I ask, do these desirable monuments of a country’s progress in local industry owe their first start, and their power to continue prosperously in existence to a protective tariff ? A hundred years ago there were none of them, therefore if the policy which has been in vogue there for so many years was so detrimental to that country’s progress, what a truly wonderful enterprising people her people must he to have accomplished so much in so comparatively short a period, and being so heavily handicapped by an unsound law. I am not so sure of my ground here in the face of the apparently conclusive objections which have been made to a protective policy, but as a “ new chum ” in this colony—an admission which I hope will acquit me of a charge of insincerity or of ignorance—when I look around here for evidence of the proportionate progress New Zealand has made, or has not made rather, in establishing industries for manufacturing the products and materials at its command, I am far from being convinced that such a policy, judiciously inaugurated, would not be beneficial. If it be admitted that it would stimulate the introduction of capital, or even induce the investment of money now here, in tho direction I have indicated, New Zealand’s immigration policy should never have been entered upon without it; and I may say, in respect to that policy, it could as matters stand be very well dispensed with for some time to come, in the humble opinion of Tours, &c., A Late Aebival. Lyttelton, May 22nd, 1880.