Untitled

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XX, Issue 3921, 1 June 1877, Page 2

Tiie commercial aspect of the Eastern question is one that perhaps has not had so much attention drawn to it as it deserves. The following is quoted by an English contemporary from a paper on the subject read by Sir Douglas Forsyth before the Society of Arts : — " The great peculiarity in English manufacturing industry is that it depends so largely for tho sale of its products on countries which are forcibly kept from establishing protective tariffs, or which have not yet reached that half-civilisation which produces a belief in the virtues of protectionism. India, China, the interior of Asia and Africa, and the Ottomon dominions, are the true markets which preserve us from the commercial distress or ruin with which we are constantly threatened by the economical policy of the Continental and NorthAmerican States. The States of the European Continent do indeed show a slightly increasing tendency to become our customers, but there is one country which has never for a moment relaxed its commercial hostility, and this is Russia. Every portion of the Ottoman dominions, or any other part of the world absorbed by Russia, is absolutely lost to English trade, and the pretended civilising mission of Russia is everywhere an errand of destruction to our manufactures. If this be true, then, the whole of our trade with countries across the border along the whole line of territory extending from Kurrachee round by Kabul, Thibet to Lhassa, which has doubled within the last ten years, and already exceeds two millions sterling, is in danger of being lost to us, if the wishes of those who desire to see the Russian

boundary in Asia march with ours ai'e ever fulfilled, or if we do not take steps to induce Russia to relax her protective policy, which is, in fact, prohibitive ; and encourage, by every means in our power, the introduction of British manufactures into the markets of Central Asia. " The contemporary referred to goes on to observe :— lf England would be a direct loser to the extent of twelve millions sterling in the present by tho absorption of Constantinople and European Turkey into the Russian protectional system, to the exclusion of all competition and foreign trade, it is certain we should lose immeasurably more in tho future if Russia and China, separately or collectively, were allowed to close all access to the regions north and east of the Himalayas. _____