PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE.

Waikato Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1510, 9 March 1882, Page 3

PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE.

In speaking at Leeds on Protection and Free Trade, Mr Gladstone said : — My boyhood was spent at the mouth of the Mersey, and in those days I used to see those beautiful American liners which conducted the bulk and the pick of the trade between the two countries. At that time the Americans were deemed to be so entirely superior to us in shipbuilhing and navigation that they had four-fifths of the whole trade between the two countries in their hands, and that four-fifths was the best of the tiade. Nothing but the dregs were left in comparison for the one-fifth of British shipping. What is the case now ? Our Free trade has operated and applied its stimulus to the intelligence of Englishmen, and, on the other hand, the action of Americans has been restrained by the tightening of their protective system. Now the scales are exactly reversed. Instead of America doing four-fifths of the trade, and that the best, the Americans pick up, if I may say so, the leavings of the British, and transact the residue of the trade, not becan.se they are inferior to us in energy — it would be a fatal eiToi* to suppose so : not because they are less enlightened or less persevering— they are your descendants, your kinsmen, and fully equal to you in all that goes to make up human energy and power ; but they are laboring under the delusion from which you yourselves have but lecently escaped, and in which some misguided fellow-citizens seek again to entangle you. In 1850 I think I am right in saying, the relative percentages of Ameiica and England — inward and outward — in the sea trade of the world wore lepresented by 13 for America and 41 for England; in 18S0, the 41 of Encland had giown to 49, and the 13 of America had dwindled down to 6. There is the genuine fruit of a protective system exhibited for you, mitigated in the case of Ameiica by its, own inteiual encigies and the cuoimoua field that is open to it — a field which m yotu case you would not find, were you, unhappily, disposed to tollow America in her ciroib. And the last Avoid I Avill say to you in the way of statistical statement i& this : Of the whole sea tiadc of the world the 33,000,000 inhabiting these islands possess 52 per cent — moie than one-half of the entile sea trade carried on by the entire human race, civilised and unchiliscd. And yet, so unthankful are we for the blessings we enjoy, and so unmindful of the dangers we have escaped and the damages we long sufleied, that there are still those among us, who go to the Bntish constituencies to invite them deliberately to march back from light into darkness, and who belie\ c that if they arc only sufficiently diligent and persevering they will convert their countiy to those pernicious opinions.