THE BABEL OF PROTECTION.

Evening Star, Issue 7472, 16 March 1888, Page 2

THE BABEL OF PROTECTION.

It came to pass in the year next unto the year of Jubilee of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, when Sir William Drummond Jervois was Governor of New Zealand and Sir Harry Atkinson the Treasurer, that a flood of troubles, which had been gathering in the past, plagued the land.

And certain knights, to wit, Sir Julius Vogel and Sir Robert Stout, had in years past gulled the people and said: '• Trust in us and all your troubles shall pass away 'by leaps and bounds.' " So the people trusted them, but the troubles went not away but increased. For the people were borne down by taxes and debts, and the way those knights sought to help them to carry their burdens was by borrowing more money, by making them work on roads that were not needed, and by taxing all the people that a few might be made rich. And the people trusted them until they saw that they only made things worse, and then they rose up against them, and took from them their seals of office, and cast them out, and put Sir Harry Atkinson and others in their places ; for they said : " We want meu to rule us who will do fairly unto all men, and are honest and upright, and will do their best to lessen the burdens we have to bear."

But certain silly lawyers and workers in iron and wood, and men who made leather from skins, and some who made boots and shoes, and saddles and harness, and coaches and buggies and carts, and planted orchards in which they caused to grow gooseberries and currants and apples and pears and plums, and some who followed other trades and callings, and workers in brass, and men who thought themselves wiser than others, who lived in cities and made money by hiring labor and selling the goods made by their workmen, met together and said: " What do we to sit still while this flood of troubles that has come upon the land remains ? Did we not trust in the knights that promised to tax others that we might become rich ? and are they not cast out from office and not able to fulfil our wishes? Did not they promise to tax all such goods as we makt, that were brought from abroad to make them dear, that we might multiply our dealings and our riches, though those who use them should be made poorer ? Go to. Have we not towers of protection called Custom-houses in our ports and officers for the receipt of Customs ? Let us try to make Sir Harry Atkinson, the Treasurer, and those that are with him, our tools, to protect us from those foreign invaders, and try to make them do what the people would not let Sir Julius and his disciple, Sir Robert, do." So they consulted together, and gave commission to certain men, who were reported wise among them, to lay out a scheme wherewith the people should be gulled, and the Treasurer and his officers cajoled into the belief that they wanted more taxation. And after a while they came together to bear tvhat the wise men had agreed to ; and the scribe who recorded the wisdom of the committee said they had " sought for information far and wide, so as to enable them to get the fullest knowledge with regard to proceedings from a Protectionist point of view " ; and that it would be to their own welfare if certain goods that the people needed should be made dearer to anybody who wanted to bring them into the country by paying a heavy tax. And this was intended as a bar to their being brought in. And they said, moreover, that, as a near colony had taxed its people so that none but dear goods could be bought by those who used them, the same taxation should be laid upon like goods in New Zealand. And they proceeded to look over the list of goods sought to be thus taxed. Then rose up the growers and the sellers of fruit, and some said that it was already too dear, and that it would be wrong to make it dearer, for then none but the rich could buy ij;. And a man who compounded cocoa and chocolate into confections asked why no more duty was to be laid on them for his sake.

And another man Baid fruit must be taxed because " they must have revenue." But he talked nonsense, not knowing what he meant. He was a gatherer of herbs, not of fruit. And because they could not agree, for some wanted one thing and some another, they each went home to his own dwelling, having resolved to meet again and talk the matter over.

But none of them asked the people who would have to pay for making a few rich by their paying more for what they eat, drank, burnt, wore, or used, whether they were willing to make themselves poorer to help to maintain the towers' of Protection.

Then, after a few days, they met together again; by which time they had found out that the fruit-growers had enemies in the colony as well as outside of it. And some wanted the public carriers to carry fruit at one rate of carriage over all the colony. But, said one, " if you do that you will have fruit from Cbristchurch and the North, putting aside your own orchard produce. We want a wall between us." And some of the more sensible among them said it was a bad thing to malie fruit dear, because the people, rich and poor, needed it for their health.

And then they differed among themselves, and they were divided; and some called others Freetraders by way of reproach ; and there was much uproar and confusion. And the scribe who recorded their doings said "that each Protectionist must give to the other, and they must no longer quarrel among themselves," and at last twenty-three voted against twenty in favor of resisting the use of foreign fruit, and then that class left the room.

Then others wanted coal made dear, and some dealers in coal raised their voices against it. So those present again differed ; and some called for one thing and soma another, but at last it was agreed to ask that coal should be made dearer, and then the men who traded in coal left the room.

And just the same did those who worked in leather; so that by the time they came to talk of precious stones not many Protectionists remained. Almost each one had spoken for himself and his own gain, but only one or two for the people where their plunder was not concerned. And so their meeting ended, and they agreed to send word by delegates to the seat of Government what they wanted, but it is not likely that Sir Harry will be told of the divisions among them, nor that only from a " Protectionist point of view," by barely inore than half of them, were their foolish notions agreed to. But the people were not asked what they thought; for if they knew the truth that Protection meant dear living, less work, and less comfort, they would lift up their voices against it.