FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXIII, Issue 3191, 8 October 1867, Page 4

FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION.

Those of our readers who see the Sydney Morning Herald will have noticed a very important article relating to a Bubjett * hich never ought to be lost sight of for long together in a district like this, depending on agriculture for its principal revenue. Of course we allude to the old question of Free Trade or Protection. If there is a constituency in the colony which ought never to give up this question, it is ours. We are farmers, there is no protection for the farmers. To h'm ths system is simple robbery, transferring money from his pocket to that of the manufacturer, under the cover of law. In fact, a constituency which iseither mainly commercialormainly agricultural can never hesitate; one which is principally in the manufacturing interest may possibly do so j though even they would, as we verily believe, and as the conclusions of all great political economists assert, be better under a Free Trade system. There can be no mistake about the effeot of the system of Protection hitherto ; it has embarrassed trade, diminished the general prosperity practically, lessened every mans income, taken a certain per-centage of the earnings of the whole working classes, and fostered no industry whatever. It has done a plain injury m m numberless quarters, : it would be hard to show in which it has conferred a benefit. It has been a pure unadulterated evil, and so it will continue to be as long as it lasts. No state of society can be imagined in which its evils are less counterbalanced by any sorb of benent than that of New South Wales. If, as it would appear, there is now an opportumtiy to get rid of this abominable policy, it is the duty of every provincial newspaper throughout the colony to support the demands of the metropolitan press, that this false policy may be put an end to. We are no opponents of the Ministry, nor ever were. M*ny ot their acts will not soon be forgotten, and the new Education Bill in particular received our warmest support, and remains a vast benefit to the whole community. But this Protectionist leaning and policy is enough to outweigh far greater merita. It will leave us, if presisted in, in a state ef permanent decadence, ever deteriorating. We shall continue to retrograde as long as it lists. No reform can be beneficial if clogged with the condition of failing trade, lessening comfort in every house, and to many absolute want. This is the issue before us. For the sake of a most contemptible aggregate of manufacturers, which no man can suppose capable, after all, of snpplyinga fraction of our requirements, we are to sacrifice every day a little more and a little more, the general public prosperity, and each individuals private means. If our Ministers would frankly abandon their mischievous error in this respect, would bow to public opinion and resume a more healthy financial system, we think them, in many other points, by far the best men we are likely to see in office. But if they are too obstinate or too blind to do this, if they are to insist on their suicidal plan of taxation, and will not listen to any reason, then, were they ten times abler than they are, the sooner the people of this colony from one end to the other put moie manageable men into their shoes, the better.—Clarence Examiner.