ADMISSION op AUSTRALIAN CORN.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 132, 14 September 1844, Page 112

ADMISSION op AUSTRALIAN CORN.

[From the Morning Chronicle.']

Mr. Hutt'a motion for the admission of Australian, South African, and East Indian corn, on the same terms as corn from Canada, was very summarily, and, by anticipation, disposed of in a ministerial paper yesterday. We should think that, with an avowed insufficiency of supply, those who uphold the Corn-laws ought to be delighted with, and grasp at, the prospect of getting the additional supply from our own colonies. But no : not even the cost of transport from the antipodes is considered protection enough for the British grower against the British colonist.

" Let Australia grow wool; she is a pastoral country; upon the exports of her wool depend not only the colonists, but the woollen manufacturers of Britain." Such is the advice, such the argument of our contemporary. Unfortunately, the Australians, who are the best judges, begin not to be of this opinion. They find their wool to be a commodity of a very fluctuating price, and that, however high may have been the hopes and calculations in which their wool was consigned to Europe, a depression of trade comes to disappoint their hopes and destroy their market. Hitherto, the Australians have followed the advice of our contemporary, and grown little save wool, and the consequence has been, years of prostration and ruin. Had they any variety of exports, the success of one might counterbalance the failure of another; but when the whole fortune of the colony is embarked in wool, a fall of that commodity in the English market is to Australia total rum. It is with very great regret that we have perused recent numbers of Hobart Town journals. The state in which they represent the public and pecuniary affairs of the colony is sad enough. Debts, they say, they cannot pay, and they adopt those principles of repudiation, but ill disguised, which we so stigmatize in America, but which we here find at home. Another of their arguments is — since we find England so uncertain a market for wool, why cannot we manufacture our wool into garments for ourselves ? The Adelaide journals are not so advanced, of course : but their cry is, let us no longer trust to pasturage and wool, but let us plough and sow. The growing of wool, even when the sale is prosperous, brings money into the hands of men who are not proprietors of the soil, and who do not improve the soil, who merely graze the Crown lands and the wild lands, and who are more traders than landowners, and who, when they have multiplied their capital, can choose the best time to sell their flocks and retire to the mother country. Let us have colonists who strike root deeper and more durably into the soil, who purchase land, and fix and consolidate capital in it. For these reasons, there is almost as great a rage for agricultural experiments and improvements in Adelaide as in Jamaica.

Is the Imperial Parliament to throw cold water on their zeal, and on their wholesome efforts ? Wanting corn ourselves, are we to discourage its growth in the colonies ? What with Brazil treaty expiring, United States tariff unmoved, the growing rivalry of France and Germany abroad, and our ten hours bill at home, who can tell what market there will be in England for wool ? And are we to tell the Australians that they shall export nothing, whilst we expect them to keep open extensive maikets for our manufactures ? The idea is preposterous. We shall return to the subject of Mr. Hutt's motion, embracing, as it did, three separate and distinct regions. But neither South Africa nor India are so limited in their exports as Australia; and perhaps it was not advisable to have placed all three in the category, and pressed for simultaneous admission to a privilege due, indeed, to all; but still likely to alarm the timid selfishness of monopolists.