ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1098, 25 October 1879, Page 2

ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

PROTECTION Y. FREE TRADE. TO THE EDITOR OF THE OAMARU MAIL. Sin, —I shall feel obliged if you will permit me to make a few remarks in your paper on the subject of freetrade and protection. I will premise that it is impossible to go through the world without occasionally having differences of opinion with one's neighbors. But when those differences arise, especially where they involve an important principle, it is both desirable and proper that they should be discussed in a becoming and unprejudiced spirit. If we wish to arrive at correct and just conclusions, we should dismiss from our minds all preconcerted notions and foregone conclusions, and approach our subject with a firm determination to look carefully and dispassionately into it, neither allowing ourselves to be carried away by false inferences nor the heat of discussion. We should approach it unbiassed and unpledged, bringing with us no favorite theories to be built up, no previous opinions to be gratified or offended, not a wish that the result should bo found to be of this character or of that character, but a single earnest desire to discover of what character they are. I regret to see, sir, after a perusal of your articles of the 20th and 21st inst., that you do not appear to have treated the question under discussion in this manner. Moreover, there is a tone of flippancy assumed by you extremely ill-timed in the discussion of a question of so much importance to New Zealand, and the world at large. Your articles appear to have been written more with

the view of punishing the morning piper, than for the purpose of the general weal. You take credit to yourself for having given the subject some consideration, but admit that you have not sat down to a six months' digest of it. Perhaps, had you done so, it might have been as well for you. Can you think that a question on which some of the leading spirits of the age have spent years of toil is to be disposed of by a few hastily written articles. A little more digestion might have induced you to pause and inquire into the causes that led to the rapid development of America and her trade, and also her late state of depression. And a further inquiry might have led you to the discovery that the present depression in Canada is not due to her late fiscal policy. You state that you believe in free trade, but that it might be assumed from such an admission that your friendly attitude towards the local protectionist movement is inconsistent. You then go on to observe that the two things have no identity except in name, and thus illogically dispose of the assumption. 1 You observe that at this time of day it I is perfectly sickening to have to teach educated men the rudiments of a science and the elements of a truth. I would ask you if those who aspire to the position are capable of holding it ? and I would also ask you with whom the movement f for the. protection of our native industries i originated.; j The question, as far as' New Zealand is concerned, that we now have to discuss 2

is, I believe, How can we benefit tlio greatest number, whether by fixincr a prohibitive duty on those imported articles that wo can manufacture h ere and thus encourage local institutions or by allowing them to develope themselves free from Government interference ? With your-permission, Sir, I will a«ain refer to the subject-.—l am, &c., • . " W. J. Bru, Tyne-street,, Oamaru, Oct. 22, 1879,