NOTICE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XV, Issue 45, 2 March 1888, Page 6

NOTICE.

Subscribers removing from one ]„irt of the Colony to another, aad wishing their paper continued, should state their former address when writing to this office, as it will prevent confusion names'

by being made a Knight of the Order of Pope Pius IX. Mr. Webster, who is the partner of the celebrated Mark Twain, has earned distinction, by the labours bestowed by him on a recently published life of Pope Leo. A reporter of the New York Tribune has interviewed Mr. Blame at Paris on the subject of the President's Meesage, and has obtained from him a very full and a very clear condemnation of tbe President's proposals. Mr. Blame proposes to leave the tariff untouched, bat to take the tax off tobacco, which, he says, has changed from a luxury into a necessity, as is commonly the case. This step, he says, would afford a great relief both to the grower and the consumer. The tax on whisky he would retain, there being a moral side to the matter, and the revenue thus produced he would apply to the fortification of the seaboard cities. Not that he expects an attack upon them, but that he thinks such an attack should, in any case, be made absolutely impossible. When the fortificatiou had been completed, be would apply the tax to lightening the burden on real estate. Wool growers he would protect, as to break down the industry and be dependant on foreign countries in this case he would consider an unwise policy. The President's recommendation, he allows, might increase the export trade in some few articles of peculiar construction, but it would increase the import trade tenfold in the great staple fabrics. " How are we," he asks, to export staple fabrics to Europe, and how are we to manufacture them cheaper than they do in Europe unless we get cheaper labour than they have in Europe 1 . . , Whenever we can force carpenters, masons, iron -workers, and mechanics in every department to work as cheaply and live as poorly in the United States as similar workmen in Europe, we can, of course, manufacture just as cheaply as they do in England and France." Nor would the farming class be benefited by such imports even at greatly reduced prices, for the workmen driven out of mechanical and manufacturing pursuits must become tillers of the soil increasing proportionately the product and decreasing the home demand. But as to the foreign demand, who can tell from what source it will be supplied ? President Cleveland's recommendation, moreover, is that which was adopted in 1846 on the recommendation of President Polk, and which led to the financial panic of 1857. Four hundred millions of gold had been carried out of the country, to pay for foreign goods, and years of depression followed. President Polk's recommendation had been made on precisely the game grounds as those of President Cleveland's, that is the surplus revenue. But the Democratic party on going out of office always left an empty Treasury and always on coming in found a full one. Mr. Blame, however, would make here and there some changes in the tariff, not to reduce Protection but wisely to foster it. He would have the changes of trade watched and the law adapted to those changes. He, nevertheless, is alive to the importance of increasing the export trade of tbe country, but judges it still more important not to lose the Home market to the people themselves in an attempt to reach tbe impossible. " It is not our foreign trade that has caused the wonderful growth and expansion of the Kepublic," he says, "it is the vast domestic trade between thirty-eight States and eight Territories, with their population of perhaps 62,000,000 to-day. The whole amount of our export and import trade together has never. I think, reached 1,900,000,000 dollars any one year. Our internal home trade on 130,000 miles of railway along 15,000 miles cf ocean coast, over the five great lakes, and along 20,000 miles of navigable rivers, reaches tbe enormous annual aggregate of more than 40,000,000,000d01s , aDd perhaps Ihis year 50,000,000,000. Mr. Blame's conclusion as to tbe geneial effect of tbe Message is the following :— " It will bring the country where it ought to be brought — to a full and fair contest on the question of Protection. The President himself makes it the one issue by presenting no ether in his Message. I think it well to have the question settled. The Democratic party in power is a standing menace to the industrial prosperity of the country. That menace should be removed cr the policy it foreshadows should be made certain. Nothing is so mischievous to business as uncertainty, nothing so paralyzing as doubt.*