THE VICTORIA TARIFF.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1360, 16 February 1865, Page 2

THE VICTORIA TARIFF.

{From the Argus, Jan. 21.) Surprise and astonishment firs terms Altogether too mild to express the feelings which were evoked in the city yesterday by the publication of the ministerial budget. It had not entered into the mind of the most rabid anti-Ministerialist to conceive that a Cabinet, consisting pre-eminently of practical men, could have presented such a mass of objectionable propositions to the country. It had not dawned upon the weakest intellect in Melbourne to suppose that a Ministry, the real heads of which are themselves merchants, could have submitted to Parliament a plan so well calculatod to destroy the trade of the port, and embarrass and embitter the people, who would at once suffer from and be deceived by it. But these marvels have come to pass. From a commercial Ministry the country has received a proposition which aims a mortal blow at the prosperity of its commerce, and the comfort of its people, is little to be wondered at, therefore, that nothing else was talked of yesterday in the city. Impromptu gatherings to discuss the budget took place at every trader's door. Meetings of importers of various classes of goods were held to take such instant steps as the emergency permitted to oppose the passage of the altered tariff; and the Chamber of Commerce summoned a special public meeting of merchants and traders, to be held on Monday next, to give expression to the general feeling on the subject. It is impossible to compress within the compass of an article the infinite variety of objections to the tariff which were expressed on all hands. Every man's experience in business furnished, him with new and peculiar arguments against its adoption. It was not denied by any one that the passage into law of the tariff produced by the Treasurer would utterly extinguish the intercolonial trade. The colony has striven, ever since it had an independent existence, to make Melbourne, as a free port, the depot of trade for all the colonies—as London and Liverpool are for all the kingdoms and countries between the poles. It has to a very large extent succeeded; an d v now, in very heedlessness of consequences, it is proposed to undo all that has been done. Let this tariff be passed, and we shall no longer receive consignments from Leeds and Manchester, to be warehoused here till they become absorbed in the trade of the seven colonies of Australasia. The soft goods men whose trade is expanding enormously at

present, and on whom the tax will fall to the extent of £800,000 per annum—may withdraw their travellers from the neighbouring colonies, and close their doors; for what inter-colonial trade can be conducted under a system of repressive, it not prohibitory, duties ? It is" lolly to talk of drawbacks on exports in this and similar trades. Give us this tariff, and every warehouseman—every merchant, indeed, who does business with the neighbouring colonies —would be forced to have a. bonded room in his own premises, where packages might be opened, and parcels packed, in the presence and under the eye of a locker, paid by the merchant at so much an hour! Surely the mere contemplation of such a state of things in the trade of the port is enough to warn us from adopting a system which only utter barbarism, as regards the theory of trade and "commerce, could tolerate. The new tariff, indeed, seems to be specially directed against that particular branch of business known as the soft goods trade, both domestic and inter-colonial, though it is scarcely less severe on others. A very few | examples of how it would operate will suffice to show its undesirable character. On every case of soft goods, the new tax would amount to about £5. If silk is used in any degree in the manufactured article, the tax becomes prohibitive, being at least fifteen per cent. On a silk hat invoiced at 17s. 4d., the duty would be 4s. Hats, therefore, winch on Thursday were sold at 215., were yesterday ticketed at 255. The cheapest kind of ladies' bonnets are invoiced at Bs. On these the duty Is 45., or fifty per cent. Saddles are imported at £15. per dozen ; but by the proposed measurement duty, the tax will amount to 15s. a saddle. On a gig collar, value lis., the duty would be 45., or something like thirty per cent. A bale of corks is worth 10s., arid the duty on it would be 155., or 150 per cent. Sago is worth per lb.; the proposed tax of Id. per lb., therefore, is thirty-three and a third per cent, on the value of the article. The importer of a carriage would be taxed at least £10 before he could land it. Toys worth £250 would fill cases, measuring 552 cubic feet. As the tariff was first published, the duty upon them would have amounted to £55. As amended, the charge would be £27 10s, or ten per cent. A crate of stoneware is shipped from England at the invoice price of £3, less seven and a half per cent for discount. It measures forty-four feet. The new duty upon it would be £2 4s, and the wharfage rate would be 3s more. If these charges are added to the cost of freight, insurance, and merchants' commission, we shall simply find the importer driven.from the market, and the public forced to content themselves with very inferior wares; for we are, as yet, far from being in a position to supply our own wants, even in this small matter, although the time is coming—and that without help from protective duties— when we shall no longer be importers of the coarser sorts of earthenware. We may quote salt as a last example. This article is produced in England at 4s 9d per ton for coarse, and 7s 6d per ton for fine qualities. On board ship its worth is 20s per ton. The tax proposed to be levied is 20s per ton, to which has to be added 5s per ton for wharfage rates. The port taxes, therefore, would be not less than 600 per cent on the original value of the article. In the face of such outrageous impositions as these, what city could maintain a race for over-sea trade against freer ports, some nearer at liapd and some not much more distant than Melbourne ?

But it' protection to the native worker was the guiding principle in the framing of this tariff, it lias signally failed to impress itself on the items of which the new scale of duties is composed. With no better protection than free trade afforded, our soap manufacturers have driven the imported article out of the market. In this branch of business cocoa-nut oil is one of the most essential of the raw materials used: "Without it the soap-boiler might rest himself from his labours. But the tariff proposes to encourage the soap-boiler by imposing a duty of twenty per cent on cocoa-nut oil! Eope-spinning and leatherwork are among our native industries ; and this same tax on oils would inflict a . burden upon them many times greater than the assistance which the framers of the tariff proposed to render them. Sad-

dlery of the highest eta pays no db, in preference to one of common mate, & the poor fellow vE; „rse will stretch only to «,e° commonest article. Nor is the native saddler beneßted because he makesi only the very finest class of work. Ihe rate or wages and other charges, preclude the local producer from turning out the commoner class of goods. The poor purchaser, therefore is taxed as much as the rich one, an not the shadow of an excuse on the score of protection to native industry can be advanced Fox the imposition. In the same manner the poorer classes will suffer m the items of boots and shoes. A pair of coaj-se navvy boots, such as men use who work hard with their hands—such as miners andlaboureis -will occupy the same space in a paekage as a dozen pkirs of ladies' boots. The duty will be four shillings on the one pan for the labourer, and on the twelve pairs intended for more delicate feet. He, therefore, who will pay for the protection the shoemaker will receive, will be the horny-handed fellow who has a use for every shilling he earns, and to whom four shillings extra on a pair of boots is an income-tax of a most oppressive kind. Through all descriptions ot leather-work the same remark applies and the statistics of trade show that this is no unimportant part of the business we do. As regards jewelry, we need on y refer to what occurred years ago in Tasmania where a similar impost was followed by most extensive smuggling. The same thing | will happen here. . , The new tariff, in short, is everywhere condemned. For one word of praise for the reductions it proposes, there are ninety-nine, of condemnation for the things it attempts. The Treasurer was singularly unlucky m his reference to Tasmania. We find no encouragement in the experience of that colony to induce us to follow its example m so important a matter as this. The operation of import duties, though associated with a system of drawbacks, has totally destroyed the export trade of Hobart Town and Launceston. We must look to progressive, and not retrogressive countries and colonies. With Sydney on one side, returning to a system ot free-trade, and with Adelaide on the other, always free and enterprising, we cannot afford to follow the example of Tasmania, or to look upon the state of Hobart Town as that to, which wo should like to see Mel-

bourne reduced. Parliament has no choice. If it adopts this tariff, it destroys the intercolonial trade; it burdens the colony with another quarter of a million of taxation foi no adequate reason; and it affords such a protection to native industry as, in truth, would be found in practice a delusion and a snare. From the ignorant and wilful incapacity which has brought us to face such a calamity as we are threatened with in this proposal, there must be escape. Better that there should be a less lavish expenditure m many directions—better that we should have no Parliament to rule over us than one which gives us a stone when we ask for bread better that we should have any Ministry, or no Ministry at all, than that such a lasting injury should be done to this colony as is inseparable from the adoption of the M'Culloch tariff.

The Sydney Herald, of Jan. 21, on the same topic says: — A sketch of the new tariff as proposed by the Victorian Ministry has appeared in our telegraphic intelligence. We are not to assume that, because this tariff has been proposed, that therefore it will pass. It has yet to undergo the ordeal of discussion, both within and without the walls of Parliament. It has been framed in accordance with a promise to give incidental protection to certain branches of colonial industry. There has been some analogy between the position of the Ministry in Victoria and the Ministry here. Some of its members decidedly favour protection as a theory, and all of them seem to think that for Ministerial support it is necessary to court the protectionist party. Whether this calculation is a sound one remains to be seen. It was a very unsound one here. When the public at large —and especially the mercantile public —comes to look fairly in the face the probable results of the proposed package duties, the conviction will deepen that they will injure the commerce of the colony without affording any corresponding benefit. So far as the commercial rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne is concerned, it is, of course, all in our favour that our rivals propose to hamper the commerce of their port. A fresh disability imposed on them is equivalent to a fresh facility conferred on us. If we look forward to the future in no spirit but that of rivalry, we should rejoice rather than otherwise at the course which the Ministry in Victoria proposes to pursue. But, desiring the prosperity of all the colonies, and, satisfied that that prosperity will be best, secured by the general adoption of free trade, it is a matter of regret to see false principles of commerce threatening to become popular in a colony taking the lead that Victoria does. In this colony we have just achieved a victory over the first serious attempt at the introduction of a protective tariff; but the value of the victory, in the interests of Australia generally, would be largely destroyed" if the free-trade policy, so firmly asserted in Sydney, were reversed by the triumph of protection in Melbourne. The colonies are independent of one another in their legislative powers; but they are not independent of each other, so far as mutual influence goes, We may hope that the result of our own general election will strengthen the hands of the free-trade party in Victoria; and certainly the triumph of the protectionists in that colony, even to a small extent, would re-awaken the now dormant hopes of the protectionists in this. All the efforts of English financiers have been directed of late towards reducing the number of articles on which duties are levied. Mr. Verdon reverses this, and substitutes for a simple tariff a somewhat complicated one; l 1 !)ere is nothing whatever to justify this change. The revenue obtained by the change is comparatively insignificant, aud bears no proportion to the vexatious hindrance caused by package duties to the commerce of a large port like Melbourne. j There is no financial pressure on the treasury to justify these tricks. Mr. Edgar had at least the excuse th&t the public chest was empty,andthat nothing would bring money in so quickly, or at so little cost as a 10 per cent. ad valorem duty. But Mr. Verdon has no such excuse. He is not in want of fresh revenue. He deliberately flings away a considerable: revenue, easily levied, and not burdensome or inequitably pressing on the community, in order that he may fill up the vacuum by

new dutieß levied purposely to incorporate a false principle into the commercial legislation of the colony. It is always a misfortune to have to meddle with the tarifi at all It upsets the calculations of merchants, and deranges for a time the course of trade. But to meddle with a tariff simply for the purpose of spoiling it, is a piece ot wanton mischief rarely perpetrated, and one which will certainly not bring much renown to its authors. It was reported, when Mr. Edgar first introduced his tariff into our Parliament, that a certain member of the Victorian Cabinet expressed in the Assembly his rejoicings thereat, as a suicidal measure.on our part, and one likely to redound to the commercial benefit of Victoria. "We are certainly in a position now to return the compliment. So far as relates to commanding the trade of Riverina and the re-export trade to New Zealand, the proposed tariff would be in favour of our merchants as respects the articles taxed. The tea and sugar duties are to be reduced to our standard. Practically, this will have the effect of preventing our obtaining an increase of our revenue by raising our duties to the present Victorian rate. This will probably be a matter of congratulation to many politicians on this side of the border; but it takes away an opportunity of raising revenue in an easy, equitable, and inopffressive manner. If the gold duty, too, is reduced from 18d an ounce to Is, we shall probably have to follow suit, in order to prevent the gold from being smuggled across the border. When Victoria reduced the duty from half-a-crown to 18d, we had to do the same. The reduction is probably made in order to conciliate the diggers to the new tariff, and also to inflict a little gentle revenge on New South Wales for its bad behaviour in collecting its own border duties. When the colonies deliberately legislate against one another there can be no cordial co-operation between them. They can underbid each other, like rival tradesmen, to their mutual ruin ; but this is not exactly the sort of relation they ought to bear to each other. In course of time, no doubt, when this kind of inter-colonial wrangling haa borne its fruits, it will be found that concert is better than contest, and a customs union will be arranged. This might be done now if the temper of the different colonies would admit of it. But it is too wise and comprehensive a measure to commend itself to our present class of statesmen. We must wait till the measure is forced upon us by the pressure of circumstances. Necessity with us takes the place of foresight. The proposal to tax jewtelry must surely

have been made in ignorance of the extensive smuggling to which the attempt to levy duty on such articles has led. Jewelry can be stowed away in very small parcels. As an article of luxury it may be a very proper object of taxation, but it is only cruel to the honest tradesman to make a charge on his wares when the dishonest tradesman can so easily undersell him by evading the duty. All the jewelry sold in Melbourne could be imported overland from Sydney or Adelaide in a way that would defy detection. It would not need be be carted in drays.