The Westport Times. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1873.

Westport Times, Volume VII, Issue 1135, 23 December 1873, Page 2

The Westport Times. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1873.

Tiiktie exists, bat flourishes not, in the City of Auckland an association of enthusiasts styled a Protective League, the members whereof seek to impose on the trade of the Colony the incubus of protective duties as a means of fostering native industry. Quite recently the League, at some considerable expence, freely circulated a laboriously compiled pamphlet to prove the correctness of the theories maintained, but the arguments fell on deadened fi ears, aud the production passed almost unnoticed, or, if noticed at all, only in terms of condemnation. But the vitality of the League was not apparently much impaired, it still has existence although gaining but few converts. From a report of recent proceedings at a meeting of the members, it appears that the professed object of the League is to bring to New Zealand shores an increased and ever increasing number of immigrants to consume the ever increasing stores of the province. But as these people, to become profitable consumers, must be employed, the League would as an aid to the establishment of manufactures, impose high protective duties on all, or nearly all, the imported articles of home or intercolonial manufacture. It is further advanced as an argument that the duty is incumbent on the colonists who are already settled in New Zealand to not only provide means for employment of fresh comers but also for the coming generation. Parents and guardians of youths even now find difficulty in providing them with eligible employment, and thus it is maintained that industries, even prematurely forced and unprofitable in the early stages, will at least serve one good purpose in giving useful training to young New Zealanders. The fact is overlooked that the ranks would soon become overcrowded, and an army of ill-paid, discontented and ineffective labor created. The primary object of the League, namely to foster artificial industry by the impost of heavy import duties is well replied to in the words of an Auckland contemporary : too young, capital is too scarce, laborjs and will necessarily bo for many years too high, we are without the skilled hands or the huge lacked up capitals which have gradually accumulated in England and enabled her to become the manufacturing depot of the world. In the first essential of success—a large home consumption of these articles—we are deficient. Just as in a village it is not needful for a workman to be skilled in any one special branch, but rather to be able to turn his hand to anything in his own line, so in these comparatively small populations it is impossible to have that minute division of labor indispensable to the extension of great manufacturing industries. No high duties, nothing in the way of so called protection can overcome these difficulties. They can only entail upon the mass of the people—the buyers—an enormous pressure of taxation for the profit of the smaller portion—the producers— in whose favor the taxes are to

operate. A people burdened with heavy taxes and paying artificially high prices is necessarily wasting a vast amount of labor and misdirecting its own industry.- It cannot compete with one whose duties arc confined to a few articles of common consumption—duties easily collected and which affeqt only the articles actually imported, instead of raising through them the price to the buyer of all others of the same kind produced in the colony. The statements of the Protection League on these points are so essentially misguiding and yet so plausible to those who do not look beneath the surface that we are loth to see them uncontradicted or unexposed." So far the tactics of the League have not attracted much attention beyond its immediate sphere of action, and it is improbable that away from local surroundings it will gain many adherents. Still to the extent of influencing local politicians to essay legislation thereon when " the House " again meets, it may exert influence, and to avoid the evil of experimental legislation on a matter wherein all colonists of high or low degree are intimately concerned, the Auckland Protection League will require vigilant watching. It is too much the custom among the scattered communities of New Zealand for each little* centre to consider its own local affairs as the be all and end all of solicitude, and . thus topics of general import are disregarded, while those of mere local .and comparatively trivial import receive undue prominence. The subject under notice should not be permitted, in legal phrase, to become a case in point.