The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JULY 27. BRITISH FREE TRADE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 92, 27 July 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JULY 27. BRITISH FREE TRADE.

Although there is a large and slowly increasing number of Protectionists in ; Great Britain, there is no douui iliac tile j bulk of Britons regard Five L'rade as j the sheet anchor oi commerce. I'wtoijday we learned that .Japan was about t# ! penalise British luaniil'al-iures by the inii position of a heavier tariff, and if the , imposition is not unfriendly to Britain, j it is probably by way of spurring Japanese manufacturers to greater effort*. Although Japan is a manufacturing nation and desires to increase her manufactures, she has not yet been able U produce ail the goods her expanding necessities demand. Japan has the power of imitation to such a remarkable degree that she enters into new fields of endeavor -with the greatest confidence. From her point of view, she is justified in placing a heavy embargo on goods she does not yet manufacture, but intends to. She has skill, imitation, and, above all, cheap labor. Added to this, she has intense cultivation and small holdings, and is not, like Britain, largely dependent on outside help. The preferential tariffs of the British colonies are by way of making the people pay higher prices for manufactured commodities, but the dominions try to show that it is by way of spurring manufacture. The point for the dominions is that local manufacture does root increase in proportion to prohibitive tariffs. If the dominions Jhad established all the necessary industries and could successfully compete as to price with outsiders, it is obvious that the time would' be ripe to put up a tariff wall. At present tariffs against manufacturing countries are by way of supposition that in. ten, twenty, or fifty years' time the dominions will be independent of France, Germany, America, and the rest of the manufacturing nations. Britain is Free Trade because | she is dependent on outside countries for raw products. No country can use raw material so skilfully or do so large an export trade. Few countries have proportionately so little raw material. As> manufactures are the essential feature of British commerce, it follows that to erect tariff walls would be national ! suicide, or, at least, would largely increase the retail price to the people. The enormous expansion and variety of British trade is the best evidence that Britain's Free Trade p<jlifly> is the best policy for Britain. The,people who predict ruin for Britain because of this policy do not see that the Old Country has brains, and that she is commercially selfish enough to desire cheap markets for the benefit of her trade and of her people. If Britain and her lands were wholly reproductive; if, in short, Britain'sm primal industries returned their just proportion of her ■wealth, the Free Trade policy of the Mother Country might be varied bv the imposition of tariffs. But, seeing that Britain is content to use the raw of other countries for the swelling of her manufactures, her policy is. like, nmt of lj§r SQUSlusions, definitely I beneficial to the greatest C6untry on earth. Other countries sneer and show ' the fallacies of British method. The great men of the Old Country do not worry at all. Calmness and conservatism continue, and in a country where deI cadence is prophesied the people proceed with their "jobs" undisturbed by the elanlor of outsiders. The clamant Press in America and Australia point the finger of scorn at the "slowness" of Britain,' which sticks to Free Trade as the sheet anchor of the nation, but nothing the outsider can do will convince the Old Country that it is best to buy in a dear market so that its goods may "be sold at so dear a rate that the manufacturing world at large can undercut the most potent manufacturing people on earth.