The Lyttelton Times. TUESDAY, MARCH 14, 1893.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXIX, Issue 9985, 14 March 1893, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. TUESDAY, MARCH 14, 1893.

The Cheviot Estate and the new principle of fairtrade are not, probably, suspected to have much connect ion with each other. But it ia nevertheless a fact that they are related in a rather close way. The ultimate object of the fairtraders of Great Britain is, as the bulk of their speeches and writings tell us, the unity of the Empire. Prom the fairtraders are recruited the ranks of the politicians like Mr Lowtherand Colonel Howard Vincent, who made such a strenuous attempt last year to get for Colonial produce admission on favoured terms into the English markets. They failed, but their agitation has kept on, and by this time it has obtained the support of the agricultural interest of Great Britain. The subject is just now brought into prominence here by the visit of an English landowner, agriculturist and ex-mamher of Parliament, who is studying the producing powers of the various Colonies, and feeling the pulse of Colonial public opinion about fairtrade. This gentleman, Mr W. J. Harris, is firmly persuaded that the agricultural interest of Great Britain can only be saved from the world’s competition by a return to the old system of Protection destroyed in 1846 by Cobden, Bright and the Manchester school. The party that be belongs to is making its voice beard all over Great Britain. On every platform it has speakers, and in the Press it is served solidly by numerous writers. The latter have quite lately been pointing out that nearly forty millions’ worth of agricultural produce is yearly imported into Great Britain, which could all be grown just as well there, and ought to be grown there. They argue that the grip of the Manchester School ia relaxing; they maintain that the result of the freetrade of 1846 is the ruin of agriculture, a vast accumulation of misery in the towns, and a comparative failure iu the export trade or manufactured articles. We have, they say, destroyed our agriculture, and emptied the country population into the towns, there to starve, without getting for our manufactures that pre-eminence ia the markets of the universe which was promised by the Manchester school as the inevitable consequence of the acceptance of its doctrines. A duty of eight shillings a quarter on corn would, they compute, raise the price three shillings all round, aud a penny a pound on meat would, they have calculated, give the seller throughout Great Britain something between a bonus of a halfpenny and three-farthings. A principal feature of their scheme is that they propose to admit Colonial products free, on condition of a quid fro quo in the Colonial tariffs.

The part played in the discussion of this subject by the Cheviot sale is important. At the outset we are met by a numerous school of thinkers who insist that the soil of the United Kingdom is capable of carrying a far larger population than the one it now fails to feed. Henry George, in his first book, had some very elaborate and, we must admit, convincing passages on this subject. It is the firm belief of many of his successors that more than a hundred millions could be comfortably fed by the soil which at present is devoted to grazing—parks, deer forests and the like. Bad land laws—the worst m the world — prevent the agriculturist from coping with his foreign rivals. The accumulation of fortunes made in business has, on the other band, bad the effect of making agricultural investment fashionable in spile of its want of profit, A man bays a principality in order that the principality may yield him a place among the magnates of the country, and eventually perhaps a title. The latest instance is supplied by the wealthy brewer who put down three-quarters of a million in cash for Aylesford’s historic estate. Ho may or may not get his title in due course, but it is beyond doubt that be will, as a trenchant critic has remarked, “ live a useless life of idle grandeur among a community of ruined farmers and subservient, peasants,” Something analogous to' this purchase was enacted when the lata Mr Kobinson went to the Nelson Land Office and monopolised the Cheviot property, as the land law of the time permitted. But the Cheviot of to-day is a marvellous contrast. In the Old Country they go on with their readymoney transactions, in spite of the writing all over the face of a ruined country, and the warning voice of misery rising in every town. Here we have noted these things, and felt the pinch of monopoly within our own borders. We have determined that the labour of the many shall not continue to give value to the property of the few. One of the signs of tho time is the readiness of hundreds of farmers to go to Cheviot to do their part in building up a nation. New Zealand is, beyond a doubt, a producing country, and her production is of the rapidly progressive order. Great Britain, on the other hand, is unlikely for many years to get out of the had habits which cramp her agriculture, and bring it to naught in the face of foreign competition. Cheviot proves that the question of whether the soil of Great Britain will or will not one day feed a far larger population, is at present too remote to be interesting to more than the few particularly ardent of the laud reformers. The more interesting question is that of Imperial-Colonial reciprocity. If Great Britain could grow all her own food, no sane man would talk of reciprocity. But the fact is that Great Britain does not grow all her own food, while her practice is not encouraging to the theory that she ever will. Reciprocity becomes, therefore, a real question tor wise men to consider. The advantage to ha derived from reciprocity by the agriculture of a colony which exports ten millions, mostly the produce of agricultural and pastoral pursuits, is evident at a glance. Bonuses of three shillings a quarter on grain, of a halfpenny a pound on meat, and of something substantial on butter and cheese, ■would be very popular throughout «uoh.*fecolony.. They~would .buy,. Bup>

port for Imperial Federation, by proving that tlm Empire is the most profitable of all possible connections. A faw good years with an expanding export would make federation t)i« moat popular electioneering cry ever beard in the Colony. It will bo urged that the town populations would look with suspicion and distrust upon any policy which would place their industry in competition with the cheap labour of the Old World. Jlut a tariff protecting vib against foreign nations v/ho will not reciprocate, and giving us needed revenue from British goods, would satisfy the town workers. Reciprocity would, in fact, make the country without destroying the town industries. What the country is in the economic life of the nation is recorded in the statistical volume lately completed, where we read that no leas than 370,000 of our people dwell in the country, that the population of all our Boroughs (276,000) would not make one •■Melbourne or Sydney, and that 90,000 people get their living by agricultural and pastoral pursuits, and the other departments of “ primary production.” We certainly have everything to gain, and nothing whatever to lose, from reciprocity. We ought to be ready to meet half-way the men who offer us the boon for the sake of present kinship and the co-partnership of future Imperial greatness.