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New Zealand Mail, Issue 12, 15 April 1871, Page 4

Peotection in Victoria. —The " Australasian Trade Beview " for March says :—" A considerable body of the electors, not satisfied with the Customs tariff now in operation, and which affords some encouragement to colonial manufactures, have been clamouring for additional proteetion to what is termed " native industry," and have urged such an alteration in our fiscal arrangements as would have seriously impeded commerce and imposed unnecessary burdens on the people. These, in some cases, have sought that duties ranging from thirty to fifty per cent, should be charged on imported articles which are capable of being produced in the colony, and their principles were made a test question at the recent elections. The result has shown that a large majority of the members of the new Parliament are opposed to any further protection, and that twenty-five of this majority are pledged in the interests of free trade. It is eminently satisfactory that not only have nearly all the most important and populous constituencies in the colony returned members holding enlightened and advanced views on Fiscal Legislation, but that the Government and the Assembly, as a whole, see the necessity for a revision of our present cumbrous tariff, so as to render it less irksome to those engaged in the trade of the port, and especially in the direction of af freer interchange of commodities between the colonies. Altogether we have less to dread, and more to hope for, from the Government in power and the new Parliament than we have been able to indulge in for year § past."