The Daily News WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20. THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT AND THE COLONIES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8009, 21 December 1905, Page 2

The Daily News WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20. THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT AND THE COLONIES.

Winston' Chuiichill, Under-Secre-tary in the Colonial Office at Downing Street, has high ideals, if the cabled gist of a speech he recently made at the City (London) Liberal Club is a criterion. Churchill isj young (81 years of age), sanguine and eager, but he isn't the Secretary of State for the Colonies. When he said tint free trade would be the principle governing the Imperial authority's colonial policy he may have been speaking " by the book." If Mr Blow, Under-Secretary of the New Zealand Public Works Department, or any other high official, promised that a couple of millions would ; be spent in development of Taranaki ironsand, we should jump to no conclusion—we should wait until Mr Hall-Jones had said his say, or the Premier had told us what he intended to do. * * * ♦

Supposing, however, that Mr Churchill is the mouthpiece of the new Secretary of State for Colonies (Lord Elgin), it will be interesting to see whether Jhe colonies will take a leaf out of the Imperial Government's book, giving a " great free market, asking no price, driving no bargain, seeking no calculated repayment." This promise is not a tinkering with a reciprocal tariff between the Old Land and the colonies. It suggests the removal of the tariff-wall altogether duty - free goods from Britain and the exportation of duty free goods in reciprocity from the colonies. Indeed, under New Zealand's Preferential Act of 1903, it is provided that where any country abolishes the duty on articles of New Zealand manufacture or produce, New Zealand may reduce or abolish the duty on incoming goods to such an extent as may " square matters," so to speak. We paid nearly £160,000 in duty for clothes in 1 904, with the object of discontinuing the use of shoddy, and forcing the people not able to afford expensive New Zealand clothes into supporting local manufactures. Yet there :s reciprocal treatment between England and New Zealand in this class cf goods. Accordingly, we pay enormous duties for books, and although the reciprocal tariff is lighter on British books, U.S.A. and Canadian boots are sold here in larger quantities and as cheaply, despite the tariff-wall.

It is obvious that the free trade spoken of by Churchill would lift the burden greatly and discourage false imports ill favour of Homemade articles. Sugar brings in an enormous revenue to New Zealand so do other articles of daily use, not' excluding potatoes, which we have lately, because of potato disease, been obliged to import from America and Australia, the duty being leviable on the market price of the visible supplies. As the Hon. Chas. Mills, Minister of Customs, said a while ago: '' The tariff is a fearful and wonderful thing which I do not understand." The Hon. Charles has 800,000 fellow dunces in New Zeaand on the tariff question. li Driving no bargain" '"s a good line in Churchill's promise. He said the colonies would get what Britain had a right to give, asking no price. Naval protection ? We don't pay a huge amount for naval protection, but to pay anything a l , all for absolutely ineffective prot clion is only waste of money. Many of the warships that have tottered* out r,o these waters during the reign of Conservative Governments have been merely rust and paint. Obsolete be fore we see them, they moon around for a bit, and then go Home to be made targets of, or to be broken up for—shall we say firewood ? We will say firewood, for the old Tanronga was a wooden horror with no modern armament, of any kind, except the men's small arms. Perhaps " asking no price " would improvo this.

♦ * * ti In connection with the colonies and Downing Street, it lias often struck us that Downing Street knows as much of the colonies as the colonies know about Julius Caw's grandmother. If you engaged an Englishman to manage a New Zealand business for you, you would like him to see the business be was going to manage, and not manage it from! London altogether. Chamberlain said a vast amount about the " bonds of Empire " and the " Federation of the Empire," and the " sister nations across the but he knew nothing of the sister nations by personal contact —except with Africa, whither he went to play a bluff hand in favor of Chinese labor. Lyttelton, tho next Secretary of State to tho Colonies, was even more stay-at-home, even more pro-Chinese. We send Colonial Premiers to England to confer. Why doesn't the Imperial Government send statesmen to the colonies to examine local conditions ? A stray peer, who does not come in contact with "the people "—merely because they are not in his " class " —certainly returns to Britain from his governorship and says things that don't matter in the House of Lords.

# * # (t The colonies are urgently in need of a visit from men of brains and observation, sent by the Imperial Government to see the colonies they have heard about in a far-off echoing way. That the colonies are looked upon as rathei a " bore " is shown by the fact that the Queensland governorship went begging for eighteen months, two noble persons having thrown it up because the pay wasn't high enough. The Marquis of Linlithgow, Australia's first Governor-Gen-eral, said he couldn't maintain his dignity on the few thousands he was drawing, and drifted 1101110 agajn. That he was a millionaire doesn't matter. We just mention tho circumstance to show that the Empire isn't always tho first consideration, and that living on the outskirts of it is looked upon in very high circles as rather a " come down." The Russian Government sends statesmen to New Zealand to examine its social institutions. You remember Kharkofl"? The Japanese Government follows suit and despatches Mr Asano to look 11s up. We get a delegation of Boer representatives round on a tour of inspection. We Welcome American senators and journalists. A member of the Canadian Senate (Mr Larke) calls. We get frequent visits of en<|njry frqm Australian politician*, and wa pertainly did receive a visit from an Irish M.P. Quito lately. He was not commissioned by the Imperial Government; he was a free lance of an enquiring mind.

* * * * The British Government knows tliat we exist, but it doesn't know how or where or wbnt for; and it doesn't seem to worry. The -British were as-toni-lied to find that our soldiers in Africa were white men, and the British, forgetting that tlw soldiers were white, are at present looking for tattooed footballers, Couldn't Camp-bell-Bannerman, taking a leaf from the cruise of the Mapom-ika, send a shipload of M's.P. on a tour of the colonies? As British M's.P. do not receive salaries, they wtuld probably pay their fares and they might learn j some things about the lEmpire and teach us some things aWlut their part j