TRADE POLICIES IN NEW AND OLD COUNTRIES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5209, 1 December 1877, Page 2 (Supplement)

TRADE POLICIES IN NEW AND OLD COUNTRIES.

(From the San Francisco Navdettcr.) No country under the -sun adopts a purely unselfish, philanthropic trade policy. Charity, in all cases, begins-at home. Free trade, in England, simply means that she can compete with all the world in manufactures, and desires the universal adoption of a doctrine that will enable her to do so. Protection, in America, means the building up of local industries until that day, not far distant, arrives when they can run alone. Soon therefore it will pay the United States, as it has paid Great Britain to send forth the writings and speeches of propagandists to tenth the beauties of free trade—open markets, to all men, everywhere. How essentially selfish the interests of trade always are may be road in almost every trade paper one takes up. Here is an instance at hand. Public Opinion prints with approval the statement that “ the exports of Great Britain were last year £4, 500,000 to Kussia, and £0,000,000 to Turkey. Great Britain has therefore a large pecuniary stake at is.-ue, and we shall confine our remarks to this. Kussia lias a prohibitory tariff, which seriously curtails our exports to that State ; in fact, as an able and versatile writer phrases it, ‘she has bolted her doors against British industry by raising her import duties and fostering her honr! industry.’ It cannot, therefore, surprise our agricultural readers that manufactures generally are opposed to Kussia having a preponderating influence hereafter in Turkey, or even a slice of Turkish territory, coutending that such influence, or such acquisition, would be followed by tbe almost future banishment of British manufacturers from this great Eastern market, and this would be the case wore Kussia to acquire Constantinople. It is idle to suppose that she would have a different fiscal policy in tile .straits of Marmora to that which now prevails in her territori s bordering on the Black and Ba'tic Seas. The Prime Ministers of England during this generation, Bussell and Palmerston, Gladstone and Disraeli, and fast—but tho greatest—Peel, have a iko been so'icitons to create new markets, to find new outlets for British manufactures, and would it not argue a decadence of national ambition, an inability to appreciate her true interests, if Great Britain now failed to uphold the interests of her citizens who are embarked in Turkish commerce 1 A great and growing market like Turkey could not be replaced, so

keen, mid fierce is international competition. An English Ministry, of whatever color, that would allow so valuable and increasing a branch of onrexport trade,involving £6,000,000 per annum (the reader should capitalize tire value—our estimate would be £120,000,000 to £150,000,000), even to be jeopardized, would incur a very grave responsibility.” If that is not pure, unadulterated selfishness, what is it? Vet every country is justified in looking after its own interests. What we object to is that there should be so much pretence of philanthrophy about free trade and its purposes.