THE LANCASHIRE PROTECTIONISTS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 14, Issue 746, 23 December 1869, Page 3

THE LANCASHIRE PROTECTIONISTS.

(Spectator, September 11.) iEit Buight, we suppose, never expected to be asked to defend free trade, twenty years and more after it had been successfully trie J. -But the fact is so. A few ■veak-kueed people in Lancashire have fallen into protectionist heresies during the sad leisure afforded by want of cotto.i <o spiii, and wane of purchasers for the :»oods wlun made; and the Tories have oeen making capital out of their failing-oil'. This is more than enough to rouse the wrath and scorn o( Mr Bright'* nature, and in u brief letter meant for publication oe cuines down viciously on Tory " tricks." " There are knaves in tne world and there are simpletons, and the one class pi'eys on the other," is his simple formula to account for whit must be to him a very strange phenomenon. Perhaps it ought not to be so very strange, for tlie truths of political economy have always been hard. sayings to the multitude, and we fear that a good many would fail to see the confusion and want of logic in the pamphlet '• wliL-h bears the mark of having been written iti Bjdlani." to any economist it seems so, but the appeals of that pamphlet to the most ignorant selfishness, founded on the injury which foreigners do us by the tariffs which injure them more, will tell in some quarters, so long as the depression lasts. We agreo with Mr Bright hat the good harvest and a suflicieut supply of cotton—but how are we to get that ? —will put Lancashire straight, aud the "protectionists."