DIFFERENTIAL DUTIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2161, 25 July 1895, Page 23

DIFFERENTIAL DUTIES.

London, July 20.

The Marquis tof Ripon, late Secretary for the Colonies, writing to the Governors of Canada, Australasia, and the Cape, on June 28, regarding the Earl of Jersey's report, comments, and recommendations of the Ottawa Conference respecting differential duties between producers, the mother country, and the colonies, condemns the proposal,, and considers the result would be of no benefit to the Empire, and likely to provoke foreigners to retaliate. It would, he thinks, have an effect on wages, increase direct taxation in the colonies, and he altogether throws cold water on the idea. As to intercolonial customs, he fears that one colony would seek an advantage which ■could pnly be gained to the prejudice of other parts of the Empire. He condemns the extension of the Customs Union to Africa, and says that though the Government passed the Australasian Duties Act thia year they would require the submission in future of any bill imposing differential duties for Crown approval. Commenting on the second resolution, he declares that Belgium refuses to permit the repeal of article 15 of the treaty, and Germany refuses the repeal of article 7 as to the Zollverein. The Government do not cbnsider the advantages, to be derived -from permitting the United Kingdom to enjoy preferential treatment in the British colonies sufficient to outweigh the disadvantages to the Empire of the renunciation of the entire Belgian and Zollverein treaties. Lord Ripon adds that i the demands of the colonies, such as those | made the Cape, Canada, and New Zealand, as to negotiations with foreign countries, must

| be made through the Home Government, and all concessions by any foreign country must be extended to the British Empire. July 22. The Chronicle hopes that Lord Ripon's despatch has finally disposed of a scheme which would deal a deadly blow at the stability and progress of the Emoire as a whole. The St. Jameß's Gazette, referring to Lord Rtpon's despatob, states that the colonies will be disappointed that he has failed to see that a differential system within the Empire would be a weapon as effective for the retention and extension of foreign trade as lor making the Empire commercially selfsufficient and independent of the rest of the world. It adds that Mr Chamberlain, with his strong views as to the necessity for strengthening the commercial bonds, may find a way of reopening the question or of meeting the colonies with more sympathy than did the Marquis of JRipon. '* July 23. The Post doubts whether the new Government will adhere to the lines of Lord Ripon's despatch.