FREETRADE V. PROTECTION.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1468, 16 February 1886, Page 2

FREETRADE V. PROTECTION.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—l have been eagerly scanning your columns for an answer to your encyclical letter, but there cannot be many very enthusiastic Freetraders among your readers or some of them would have tackled you. I rnn intelligent enough to understand that cheap railways would bo advantageous, but I cannot see how railway charges are to be reduced and local industries benefited in the way you porpose : because if the ten par cent, is paid, and importation goes on all the same, it wont help the local industries ; and if the ten per cent, has the effect of stopping importation, then we wont have the money to apply to the railways as you suggest. How does the Protectionist get over this dilemma ? it is beyond the comprehension of one who lacks intelligence to see how any public good can bo derived from Protection. We are all less or more inclined to measure the intelligence of others by their agreement or disagreement with ppr opinions. One whose opinions coincide with our own ig an intelligent fellow, and those who differ from us are generally senseless fools. Perhaps it is genuine ignorance on my pait, but the more I think about Protection the less I like it, and all i read and bear ii?. its faypr (jepipa to confirm the

opinion that its every tendency is harmful to public weal. There is certainly something amiss in our social system when (he handful of men that are here cannot be kept constantly employed, and an honest desire to reduce this anomaly may have led you and others to adopt tho Protection theory, but 1 think you are on the wrong tack. I submit that the only radical cure for the evil will be found in co-operation, seasoned with a little more self-denial and a great deal more selfreliance than we have. If the artisan is out of employment we expect the Government to find a job for him ; if somebody wants to start a paper mill or a woollen factory the Government must grant a bonus and put on a protective tariff to make sure that the venture will be a profitable one. Why, one would thivdc tho country was a huge workhouse ■V < the Government a Board of Govern We must get rid of this pauperization, and try what we can do by individual efforts and unity of action. At present we have the employer trying to get ns much work as possible out of tho employee for as little remuneration as he can, and the employee trying to do as little as ho can for as much money as he can get. When would a farmer plough his paddock if he were to yoke a portion of his team to each end of his plough and keep them pulling contrary ways? What we want is to get the team all on the right end of the plough, and pulling together. It is our boast that in New Zealand Jack is as good as his master, and so he ought to be. But when Jack finds himself in the employment of a mas who may neither have the will nor power to treat him as he has been treated by the petty tyrants he has been used to worship, lie is not studying his own best interests by assuming the role of tyrant. Put the lash in a slave’s band and he will lay it on. Until Jack tumbles to a realisation of what are his best interests he must go a begging. Protection wont help him much. It will give him the privilege of paying more for what he requires, and less of the wherewithal to pay with. Protection, faugh I There is a selfish, narrow meanness about it that makes it stink. The world is small when we embrace the whole of it. If there are certain things that our brothers iu other countries can beat us at, there must be some thing else we can beat them at if we try right, or we are not as good men as they are. —I am, etc., Wm. L. Dumcan, Kakahu Bush, Feb. 11th, 1886.

[Will Mr Duncan suggest a scheme .that will suit bettor! The object of the scheme suggested in these columns was to take the sting out of protection as suggeeted by the Government—and yet Mr Duncan has jumped on it, as if it wbe something terrible.— The Editor.]