South Canterbury Times. TUESDAY, AUGUST 17, 1880.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2314, 17 August 1880, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. TUESDAY, AUGUST 17, 1880.

Of all the voluminous, eccentric and elaborate reports which the lloyal Commissions that over-ran the colony during the last recess have evolved, the report of the Local Industries Commission is the most remarkable. Anything more indefinite, obscure, and absolutely useless, has never affronted a parliament. It is a picture whose tints arc neutral. It has neither shape nor form, nor outline. The Commissioners appear to have been so overwhelmed with information —so surfeited with advice —that their reasoning powers proved unequal to the task, and the}' failed to grasp the object of their appointment. In attempting to do too much they have practically done nothing. They have oscillated between free-trade and protection, and they have dived deep into the mysteries of the customs tariff, but (hey have emerged just as they descended, with the fool’s cap above their shoulders. Their recommendations arc the trashiest imaginable. They exhibit a deplorable ignorance of commercial first principles and political economy. But for the fact that we know the Commissioners to be men of a mischieviously ingenious turn of mind, we should be inclined, after perusing their report, to suppose them to be veritable crustaceans from the British Museum, who had recent! 3' acquired the faculty- of speech. Sir Sycophant Shallow, in his maudlin moments, never perpetrated anything half so absurd as this precious report. There is is neither rhyme, reason, nor coherency in its suggestions. It is, without doubt, the most lamentable production that has yet disgraced the Parliamentary waste paper basket. It is one of those reports that would have been far better left unwritten.

Let us glance at the report for a moment, ami what do we find? A huge mass of chaff without a particle of wheat! The language employed stamps the execrable quality- of the article. It is stuffed with superlatives like a pincushion with sawdust. It abounds with such gems as “ artificial advantages,’’ “nascent stages,” “ industrial energies” “ boundless profusion,” and “ paramount importance.” But if the terms are pedantic, the suggestions are idiotic. What, for instance, could bo more palpably’ absurd than the recommendation that great caution should be exercised in making changes of the customs tariff, except for revenue purposes 'i According to this, revenue raising is of supremo importance and native industry’ is nowhere. This is rather a remarkable sentiment to emanate from a Local Industries Commission. The Commissioners have exhibited a lofty contempt for the leading industries of the Colony’. They’ say that they’ “ did not consider it necessary to make any inquiry into the position of the wool or grain growing industries, or those minor ones which are naturally associated with them.” Anyone reading their report would be driven to tbe inevitable conclusion that they were wool-gathering all the time, yet here is a disclaimer. They have politely ignored agricultural and pastoral pursuits. Then again they frankly “ regret that want of time precluded them from visiting localities where the gold and coal mining industries are situated Glare likely to come into existence.”

But if these industrious Commissioners have avoided contact with such insignificant products as coal and gold,and wool and grain, they have devoted some attention to the culture of luxuries. If the miner aud the settler have been overlooked, ’ insect life has received a fair share of consideration. The Ligurian bee is covered in clover, and a bonus of £IOOO is recommeuded to be paid out of the next loan, to the industrious silkworm. The recommendation of bonuses for each aud everything regarding the manufacture of which there is a doubt, may be termed the only point in the whole report. And the value of this advice may be estimated from the fact —a fact that has been placed far beyond the range of experiment —that no industry that cannot rise on its own legs, has ever been successfully propped up

with a bonus. The industry may he started for the sake of the bonus, and the bonus may be earned, but will the industry survive ? New industries can only live under favorable conditions, and when these conditions are absent no amount of bonuses will avail. Victoria, several years ago, offered a handsome bonus for the production of beetsugar, and what was the result? A company was formed, the bonus was earned, and the sugar-beet enterprise died immediately The same fate occurred more recently to the Taranaki Iron Smelting Company. This starting prematurely of new industries, through the artificial agency of bonuses, has been demonstrated, time and again, to bo a waste of public money. Instead of encouraging legitimate enterprise it retards the growth of new industries by promoting failures and diverting attention from the natural stimulus winch a judicious arrangement of the tariff is capable of affording. We fully expected that the recommendations of the Native Industries Commission would be undecided, but wc never anticipated anything half so stupid; irrational, and utterly valueless as the report submitted. It is the most ridiculous effort at building up the industries of a new country that has ever come under our observation.