Public Opinion.

Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1574, 8 May 1874, Page 209

Public Opinion.

FREE TRADE IN AUSTRALIA. Times, 20th February.

•Some time ago, when it was announced that the new Ministry which had risen to power in New South Wales was determined to carry out its declared policy of Free Trade, we took occasion to indicate the probable effect of this movement on the neighboring and rival colony of Victoria. We predicted that, though at first the Protectionist zeal of the younger, more active, and more, ambitious state would be irritated and alarmed by the departure of New South Wales from the path of OldWorld finance in which the two sister communities had so long marched side by Bide, and though these feelings might produce a temporary severanco of the ties that seemed to have been knit by the settlement of the Border Duties question and the discussion of a Customs Union, the ultimate result would be that Victoria would be drawn at once, by considerations of interest and by the force of example, into a liberal commescial policy. It is yet too soon to say whether the latter part of this forecast is likely to find fulfilment; but already we hear that the former part of it has been realized. Victoria has accepted the inauguration of Mr Parkes's Free Trade policy at Sydney, where, the revised tariff came into operation on New Year's Day, as a challenge ; and notice was instantly given by the Melbourne Government of their intention, at the eiid of the prescribed term of thirty days, to terminate the Border Duties arrangement, concluded, after a piolonged and violent controversy, so lately as last summer. This notice expired on the 31st ultimo, and matters now stand as they did before the settlement, except that the people of New South Wales have voluntarily abandoned the duties they levied on Victorian commerce crossing the Murray into the Northern Colony. It was in consideration of the suspension of these duties that Victoria agreed, by the arrangement which is now to be broken up, to pay £60,000 per annum as compensation to New South Wales for the loss of the duties that would have been paid into the Treasury at Sydney if the goods, instead of passing freely across the Murray, had been, sent round from Melbourne to the ports of the sister colony by sen. But New South Wales now voluntarily gives Up her port dues and her ad valorem duties on imports, and at the same time is to lose the compensation guaranteed by the repudiated Intercolonial Treaty. It cannot be said that Mr Parkes's policy is wanting in boldness ; but he has counted the cost, and carries the colony with him with unexpected unanimity. We do not doubt, and we certainly hope, that his courage will be rewarded by a largo measure of commercial success. It is unfortunate that Victorian Protectionism threatens to revive the struggle between near neighbors and kinsmen, who should be the = best of friends, for the mastery of the Riverina—the fertile district on the river Murray, politically joined with New South Wales, but hitherto commercially dependant on tho more southern colony. But henceforward Sydney can show clean hands; and Melbourne puts herself completely in the wrong. Not so long ago it was quite otherwise. Then, though the geographical position of the Riverina made it most natural that its commercial wants should be supplied by Victoria, the Government of New South Wales endeavored, by oppressive duties, to monopolize the trade, so imposing upon the inland district a grievous and unjust charge, for the benefit of the producers and merchants of Sydney and the.other coast towns. The consequence was, the growth of a contraband traffic, with its necessary incidents in the shape of bickerings, recriminations, and absurd fiscal experiments by way of reprisals. It may, be thought that Sydney still stands in a very inferior position to her rival as a competitor for the commerce of the Riverina district. • Melbourne, is practically, not much more than half the distance from the banks of the Murray that Sydney is, and the natural drift of business from the Riverina is southward, while the means of intercommunication have been much less developed in New South Wales than in Victoria.,',, But from the beginning of the I present year the trade of New South Wales Btal'ts free, or very nearly so, from import duties, while Victoria still retains an ad valorem tariff, including all the most considerable and valuable imports, and varying from fifteen to twenty-two per .cent. As our correspondent at Melbourne puts. it, " unless the carriage, from Sydney to

the Murray, of goods which have paid 110 duty costs more than the carriage of the same goods from Melbourne to the Murray, film the duty paid in Melbourne—which in many instances is twenty per cent, of the value—-it is obvious that the Murray can be supplied as cheaply from Sydney as from Melbourne." It is highly probable that the carriage will cost much less, and, as New South Wales will now have a strong motive for pushing on all works of communication—railways, carriage roads, and the like,—the problem will day by day grow less difficult on the side of SydneyIt will become, in proportion, more and more perplexing for Melbourne, unless the people of Victoria can be brought to see the futility of the Protectionist system. In fact, the merchants of the southern capital, exaggerating the advances their northern rivals can at once make, liave been smitten with the apprehension that New South Wales would not only make good her trading supremacy on her own ground, where Victoria heretofore has proclaimed her right to reign, but would actually invade Victorian territory. The tables, in fact, have been completely turned ; and it is now the Victorians who insist on the abrogation of the Treaty, and on the re-enactment, of the border duties, for the exclusion from Victoria of the New. South Wales' tradesmen, who, we learn from, Melbourne, "have already advertised their intention of underselling us on this side of the river, and are sending their travellers to us as we used to send ours to them." Such alarm would, a few years ago, have appeared the wildest absurdity, if by any effort of imagination the competition thus apprehended could have been presented to the mind of the commercial community of Victoria. But it is not only the Victorian trade with the Kiverina that is threatened by Mr Parkes's spirited measures of fiscal reform. The removal of the port dues at Sydney had already given a great impulse to the legitimate commerce of New South Wales, and the natural advantages of the commodiousharbors of the northern capital have begun for the first time to be properly understood. The repeal of the ad valorem import duties would operate still further and more powerfully to attract trade to Sydney ; and the contrast with the exorbitant burdens laid upon commerce in Victoria will quickly be appreciated by the mercantile world. But it is nearly certain that what Sydney gains by free Trade, Melbourne, in fact, loses by Protection ; and, though the remedy is ready at hand whenever Victoria can be brought to see the true sources of her rival's success and of her own peril, there are no present signs of enlightenment among the ruling democracy. New South Wales, at all events, cannot well recede from the new path the wisdom of her counsellors has chosen. She has everything to gain and nothing to lose by perseverance in the pursuit of Freo Trade. Even if Victoria, finally stirred to emulation by the prosperity of her rival, should forswear her economical heresies, the latter will still have made solid.gains She will have developed the system of internal communications, and so strengthened all her interests and consolidated all her resources ; she will have laid the foundations of a thriving commerce, which Victoria, under liberal guidance, may share with her, but cannot pretend ever again to monopolize.