COLONIAL PREFERENCE.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 12901, 12 February 1906, Page 6

COLONIAL PREFERENCE.

A CANDID CONFESSION. Writing to a correspondent, Lord Monk* Bretton, who was principal private secretary to Mr Chamberlain, and accompanied Mm during his South African tour, says 'the classes who would receive a. preference by commercial treaties between Great Britain and the self-governing colonies, would be home manufacturers and colonial farmers. The classes giving a preferer.ee would be British farmers and colonial manufacturers. What was to the advantage of the first two classes would be at the expense <f the other t\^o. The British farmer would be in this position, that, while the protection of manufacturers raised the price of his necessaries, he would be called upon to give up his compensating protection to share it with the colonial farmer, or he would be so much the worse off. The sympathy for preferential trade which had b;en shown by chambers of manufacturers in Canada and Australia coincided with their desire to build higher, the tariffs which protected their particular form, of manufacture. Similarly hi England a section of agriculturists, *f whom a leader was Mr Chaplin., had advocated tariff reform, as a benefit to fanners. Any advantage they would receive therefrom must be the result, not «f the present proposals, but of the heavier protection of agricultural produce. v?ueh heavy protection would involve a material increase in the cost of food to the people of this country, and such a policy had been recently disowred by Mr Chamberlain at Bristol.

It was, however, perhaps even more pertinent to consider that Protection, in its restriction of oversea trade, must adversely affect the position of London as the clear-ing-house of the world.-that the towns of •the south coast depended for their prosperity on the City -of London, ar.d that Susses farmers found markets in those caast- towns.