The Oamaru Mail. MONDAY, APRIL 26, 1880.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1255, 26 April 1880, Page 2

The Oamaru Mail. MONDAY, APRIL 26, 1880.

We have received the Report of the Christchurch " Association for the Fostering and Encouraging of Native Industries,*'' the contents of -which are eminently suggestive and interesting, in a short period of only six months an immense amount of useful information has been gathered and disseminated, and the Association may fairly congratulate itself upon the large measure of success "which they have already achieved. From the outset, notwithstanding the opposition which anything savoring of protection had to encounter from a large section of the press, "we felt compelled to give the Association our warmest support. We do not in the least regret the course which we adopted, and the result so far confirms our views, and justifies our most sanguine expectations. We are free to admit that there has been a recognition more prompt on the part of the Legislature than we had ventured to anticipate, and, believing that some good may come even out of Galilee, the past session will not have been in vain if it does nothing more than this report informs us lias been done in placing our fiscal policy upon a more satisfactory footing. Within certain limits a protective policy is capable of ample demonstration, and we trust we are in no danger from anything approaching to protection run mad. The proposals of the Canterbury Association are carefully restrained within such limits, and, as time rolls on the unreasonable prejudices of so many of our contemporaries will yield to the inexorable logic of facts, and it will be found that protection to local industries is not the dreadful or hateful itiing which so many who have failed to take the necessary pains to understand the question would have -us believe. What is it? The document before us plainly tells us. We can easily distinguish two prominent characteristics in the objects sought to be accomplished, and indeed already in a great measure accomplished by this Association. These are—first, the liberation from Customs duties of a multitude of articles entering into our own manufactures—a purely free trade phase of the question—which will be accepted as a great boon by the trades thus benefited, and will doubtless cheapen in a corresponding degree to the consumer the manufacturers thus relieved. The trades chiefly interested are saddlery, boot, woodware, printingand stationery, coach building, «fec. These will now be in a position not only to hold their own, but speedily to absorb the larger proportion of the trade in this Colony,, thns giving profitable employment to onr own workmen and enabling us to retain a large amount of money. No freetrader can consistently offer any objection to this portion of the Association's programme. The principle has ever been recognised as a prominent tenet in the creed of the most advanced freetrade writers, and thus far at least—strange and anomilous as it may appear—the new political sect in New Zealand and the freetraders of the Old World are at one. That an avowed protective organisation should thus be doing the work which should long ago have been done by freetrade financiers is a fact not very creditable to the latter. Our fiscal policy has indeed been a clumsy and unscientific contrivance, purely for purposes of revenue and blindly ignoring every principle of political economy. We rejoice that we are entering upon a period when more intelligent and enlightened views will be kept prominently before the Legislature on such changes as may become necessary in reconstructing the tariffs of the country. The principle we refer to may be regarded as the most elimentary in the policy of the avowed protectionist, and, we repeat, it occupies likewise a very i prominent place in the creed of the | freetrader. The second principle we I observe as distinguishing the clianges j effected at the instance of the Canterbury and other similar associations, is a very marked increase of duty upon a large number of manufactures which we are now producing successfully in the Colony. To liberate such manufactures from irksome and needless taxation on the one hand, and on the other, tp increase the duty upon the Home manufacturers coming into competition with them, are the two parts of the problem which a protectionist policy proposes to solve. The one is the complement of the other. Here, however, we encounter very fierce opposition. The freetrader cannot do away with it. But what is there in all this so very alarming 1 We | .can see nothing more than an unreasoning prejudice, the result of early training. We shall be told that the effect of it is to enhance the cost of all such commodities to the consumer for the benefit of a few manufacturers. Nothing can be more absurd. The infallible result will be to stimulate local industries and enlarge the demand for them, and increased competition will here, as all over the world, largely and promptly reduce the cost and improve the quality of all such local manufactures. No one will be injured. The taxpayer will pay no more to the revenue because the imports of such manufactures will be checked, and local manufactures as good or better, as cheap or cheaper, will take their place. Jt is amazing that any colonist desiring the welfare of the Colony should object to sueh .selfevident propositions. There is nothing lin common between all this and protection as understood in the Old Country except the impie, and that even the Canterbury Association carefully ignores. Protection meant for England chiefly the com laws, taxes on the food of the people, and tjixes upon the raw materials entering into the manufactured articles, Does it imply anything of the sort here V—Certainly

not. Here we export food, and "we have the raw materials and our manufacturers in abundance among ourselves. Once more "we congratulate the Canterbury Association. Without fuss or undue agitation, and in a marvellously short period, they have accomplished most important fiscal changes, and entirely revolutionised the policy of the country. Between New Zealand and Victoria or America there is now much in common, the dogmatic -warnings of a large portion of the Press notwithstanding. And this dreadful thing has been in existence for months, and the prophets of evil are silent. The crack of doom has not come. No one is crying out. But what has come about is an increased activity in all the branches of trade and manufacture concerned. Delivered from speculative consignments and a chronic state of glut, those concerned "will improve their appliances with additional confidence, for they can rely upon the ti'ade, and we firmly believe that, more than anything else, such a policy will promote the material "welfare of the Colony.