BISMARCK AND FREETRADE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9994, 15 March 1910, Page 4

BISMARCK AND FREETRADE.

In 1875 Bismarck wrote:—"Nothing but reprisals against their products will avail against those States which increase their duties to the harm of German exports." In 1878 he called a conference to consider a revision of fiscal policy, and in that and the following year issued several State papers, advocating tariff reform, not merely for the purpose of producing revenue, but for the protection of German industries. And in 1879 he introduced his protective policy in Parliament in a speech in which he made this remarkable statement:— "I see thac those countries which possess protection are prospering, and that those countries which possess free trade are decaying. Mighty England, that powerful athlete, stepped out into the open market after she had strengthened her sinews, and said, 'Who will fight me? lam prepared to meet everybody.' But England herself is slowly returning to protection, and in some years she will take it up, in order to save for herself at least the Home market." Here is another paragraph in this speech:— "We have opened wide the doors of our State to the imports or foreign -jountriea, and we have become the dumping-ground for over-production of all those countries. Germany being swamped by the surplus of foreign nations, prices been depressed, and the development of all our industries and our entire economic position hava suffered id consequence. If the danger of protection were as gieat as we are toll by enthusiastic freetraders, Prance would have been impoverished : lonn

ago, for she has had protection since the days of Colbert, and she should have been ruined long ago." Fo.

Germany read England; for France and Colbert read Germany and Bismarck, and there is not a word that might not with truth be spoken by an English statesman at the preseut hour.