The Westport Times. TUESDAY, JULY 21, 1874.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1195, 21 July 1874, Page 2

The Westport Times. TUESDAY, JULY 21, 1874.

The discussion in the House upon tho advantages or disadvantages of tho special logislation which has experimentally fostered the trade of distillation in New Zealand, may possibly open up, and bring to more satisfactory issue than now prevails, the question of inter-colonial Eree-trade. If, as Mr Reader Wood asserts, the first attempt at protection in New Zealand has proved a failure, and that all similar attempts will prove failures also, then tho sooner the experiment is made in an entirely diverse direction the better, for the entire legislation of New.Zealand is but experimental. Very few subjects can be considered of greater importance to New Zealand thau the establishment of Inter-colonial fvc.e trade, for the mainstay of tho various Colonial industries, gradually maturing into permanency, is the opening up of markets. Distillation has hoen fostered in New Zealand by partial remission of duties on the Colonial in ado article, but the trade has not healthily expanded because it had not the full scope of markets beyond New Zealand shores. Let Inter-Colonial free trade be established and Nov/ Zealand made spirits will not alone find profitable demand throughout tho Australian Colonies, but the products of a hundred other reproductive industries, more essential to the prosperity of the people, will also follow in the same course, and New Zealand instead of mainly yielding supplies to the wool market, in production keeping thousands upon thousands of acres locked up against human population, will become a busy hive of industry. A Colony capable of producing at a cheap rate a very large proportion of the varied articles in demand in the Southern hemisphere, and in return receiving, under similar mutual advantages, suppliea from sister colonies. The New Zealand Government, although corresponding much with Home and Australian Governments on tho subject of colonial reciprocity, has not of late shewn any groat degree of energy in bringing it to a definite climax. And yet the subject has never lost interest among the reading and thinking portion of the Now Zealand public. Dissertation thereon has beeen a stock theme among journalists and in public and private debate, and the force of opinion trends unmistakeably in the direction of free trade. The Guardian, a journal whose expression of opinion commands respect, very recently wrote: — ' If New Zealand is to become the future ' Britain of the South,' she must follow and be guided by the same economic laws which have given Great Britain her present position among3t the nations of tho earth. Eree-trade has contributed much to make England what she now is ; but, as we see little hope of obtaining Eree-trade for ourselves in the same unrestricted sense with tho world at large, we shall hail with satisfaction a large instalment towards it by the opening up of tho extensive and adjacent markets of Australia to our productions. Just as in the United States, where the product of each State comprising the Union is treated as if raised within itself; a system which has contributed much to the prosperity of the Uuion, and alleviated many of the evils of Protection, and which Mr Wells, formerly Secretary of the United States Treasurv (a position which corresponds with the English Chancellor of the Exchequer), dilated upon at the last annual Cobden Club dinner in Greenwich. After exposing the evils of Protection in the United States, and dwelling on many of its ruinous consequences to local industries and the earnings of the people, Mr Wells said:—'lt ought not, however, to be ovor-looked furthermore, paradoxical as it might seem that Eree-trade itself was one of the agencies which had thus far occasioned indifference, in the United States, to tho unrestricted [application of its principles (Protection), for one of the prime causes of tho prosperity of the United State?'., past and present, was referable to the fact that Eree-trade, in its fullest signification, had been extended over a continent, and embraced 47 widely separated and, industrially, different States and territories, and that so well satisfied moreover, wero tho whole people of the truth of this, that upon no one point were they better determined in their own mind,*) than that they would not permit the creation or maintenance by any of the States, throughout the Y7hole of thisvbrpad toiritory, of the slightest artificial obstruction to the freest commercial intercourse.' If such hare been the results in the United States wo may anticipate even greater benefits in those Australasian colonies, whom the productions may he more diversified than evea in tho United Slate;;. These colonies bve eminently capable of producing all tho numerous articles reouired for the

use of mankind. Now Zealand will probably bo as great a gainer as any one of tho Australian colonies ; and wo truat tho colonists and statesmen of [New Zealand will not allow tho session of the Q-enoral Assembly to pass over without some decisive measures for tho final accomplishment of luter-colonial Free-trade."