New Zealand Times. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1874.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4226, 6 October 1874, Page 2

New Zealand Times. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1874.

If protectionists were not a people very slow to learn, a very practical lesson might be afforded to them in the proceedings taken in America from time to time with regard to the Reciprocity Treaty between the United States and Canada, which will soon have quite a history of its own. But whilst we say they are slow to learn, we must also give them credit for virtues of a very high order—qualities that have been the means of accomplishing wonders in the history of the world. If ever cause succeeded by patient work being done on its behalf, and suffering undergone, that cause would be protection. There is no amount of personal cost or inconvenience that a protectionist would not willingly take upon himself on behalf of his beloved absurdity. The sight of protectionists depriving themselves and their families of the gifts Providence munificently distributes throughout the world, in order to bring about something that is just as practicable as making two and two five, or water run naturally up hill, is a sight to move angels and men to pity. The one blot on the picture is, that all the labor and inconvenience are undertaken for absolutely nothing, or rather less than nothing. This has been the experience of the protectionists in America with respect to the Treaty of Reciprocity with Canada which was agreed to in 1854, and was put an end to in 1866, the Government of the States giving twelve months' notice of this early in 18G5, as a clause gave permission to do. The treaty gave the right to Americans of navigating the St. Lawrence, and the Canadian canals, paying only such imposts as the Canadians did. The St. Lawrence is the great national highway by which the produce of Illinois, Michigan, lowa, and Indiana can be conveyed to the sea-shore. The treaty also gave the American fishermen the right of drying fish on tho British North American coast, and it provided that the following articles should be admitted duty free into both countries :—Grain, flour, and breadstuff's, animals, fresh and salt meat, cotton, seed, vegetables, fruit, fish, poultry, hides and skins, butter, cheese, lard, tallow, horns, manures, ores, coals, stone, slate, pitch, turpentino, timber, plants, furs, dye stuffs, flax, rags, and tobacco. Before this treaty the nuisance of custom-houses" on the St. Lawrence, and the great lakes, had been considered intolerable; but it being established gave free trade in the natural products of both countries. The treaty was repealed principally in consequenco of the efforts of the extreme protectionists during the war, who thought,

as protectionists usually do, that the Canadians enjoyed an unfair advantage in sending their goods into the States duty free. Duties, which the protectionists fondly believed the Canadians would pay, were imposed to the extent of about 30 per cent. But, although they hugged their delusion as fondly as if it were a reality, consumers of the products that before used to be admitted free were not quite so sure on the point. Boston and other New England ports suffered severely from the declension of their trade with the British Provinces, and all along the boundary the smugglers were active in undoing the mischief that the American rulers were attempting to inflict upon tho people. After two and a half years of this sort of work, some of the disciple 3 of Mr. Morill were brought to their senses by the stern logic of experience. Like the Scotchman who decided that honesty was the best policy because he had "tried baith," they came to the conclusion that protective duties do really obtain money on false pretences ; but they were not able to carry their point. The yoke which they had fitted round their necks was not thus easily to be got rid of. They moved the Government to appoint a Mr. Bregn to enquire into the subject and report thereon. His report was very concise and explicit. He said that Canada produced certain kinds of produce which the Americans required but could not produce for themselves, ■and the result* of the treaty had been that American consumers had paid the whole of the duties, averaging about 30 per cent., that had been imposed. "It cannot be'denied," said he, " that whatever amounts of those products were purchased for consumption in the United States since March, 1866, were purchased at as high prices in the Canadian market as before the abrogation of tho treaty, and that the American consumer was compelled to pay the American duty in addition." So pointed a remark as this, which literally embraces the whole of the case would, we should have thought, have enlightened the most stolidly ignorant protectionist. But when once theso false and pernicious doctrines come in vogue, and vested interests grow up under their shadow, to get rid of them is a very difficult task. As the Montreal Herald very sensibly remarked in its issue of June 13, —" We must reckon upon all the selfish interests being in the lobby—that every individual, corporation, or trade which has anything to make by maintaining high prices at tlie expense of the public, will be urging their claims, and that while these parties will be especially active, each one for himself, the consumers, who are to escape fleecing by the contemplated reform, will be silent, because it is everybody's business, and no one, therefore, will shoulder it himself." This, although written in the present year, applies with equal force and vigor to the movement in 1868. The protectionists, notwithstanding Mr. Bregn's report, and the experiment made upon the breeches pockets of the people, carried their point, and the treaty was not again brought into force.

This year another attempt has been made to obtain a new Reciprocity Treaty, very similar to the old one, and of course the movement has received the strong support of all the intelligent portion of the Press. Indeed, the Montreal Herald asserts there "are few things more wonderful than the apparent unanimity of the Press of the United States in favor of the Reciprocity Treaty." The movement, we observe, comes from the very same quarter that it did in 1868—the robbed and oppressed consumers. Since the war they have been taxed very heavily to pay the interest upon the national debt, and they naturally decline to be ruined wholesale in support of a monstrous delusion. They have made the very same experiment that was made, partially unmade, and made over again in England, times without number, and they have found the very same result. They have contrasted their own progress with that of Canada, and they find that in some respects the Canadians have an advantage over them. Of course the Canadians support the movement most heartily, but they do so not so much from their own point of view as from that of the Americans. The Herald says that all the Americans ask, re this question is, "that their citizens shall be allowed to purchase, with their own money, whereever they choose, without being subjected to a fiscal penalty if they choose to spend what they have earned with their own labor in the purchase of the produce of the northern instead of that of the' southern side of the line." Nothing would seem to be fairer and more reasonable than such a request. But there were objections to it from those philosophers who believe in the doctrine of protecting native industry by handicapping it with taxes on the necessaries of life—taxes that are always paid in the greatest proportion by the laboring classes, who in all communities largely outnumber all others.