Polynesian. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu], Hawaii) 1844-1864, 1860-10-06

Among the many falacies current among our
Victorian Proteetionists, perhaps the favorite one
is that which grounds the necessity of departure
from Free Trade on the fact that the condition of
this colony is no parallel to that Of England Vic
toria, We are asked to remember, is young and
growing community-Great Britain, an old, veal
thy, and firmly established nation. Therefore,
what is good for Great Britain is not necessarily
good for Victoria. Free Trade, we are told, means
one thing at home and another here. Mr.. Cob
den's Protection was to open the English markets
to all producers-Mr. Leaders Protection is to
shut the Victorian market against all producers
who may compete with ourselves. Free Trade, in
the conventional Interpretation of it, may be suita-
BILE for the British manufact but it is injurious
to the Victorian working man. In England, they
are so rich to be able to afford the luxury of in
duIging in abstract principles-here, our right
theory is to oppose all principles. We must be-
gin industrial course, not at the point where
England leaves off but from the point whence
England herself started. We must qualify our
selves for Free Trade by long apprenticeship of
Protection; in short, we must seek the good
through the bad, the right through the wrong, the
perfect through the imperfect.
The faIlacy is of kind perhaps the most COM
mon and the most pernicious among all the delu-
sions of ignorance. 1t is based on that antique
formula, the pest of logicians-post hoe, propfsr
I hoe 1t assumes that Free Trade is the natural
product of Protection, and that wealth is born Of
restriction 1t requires to believe that truth is
only last result in long series of errors and
that nation can only arrive at the light by long
incubation of darkness. England is now great and
rich, and England once protected" her industry;
ergo, Victoria must protect her industry if she
would be rich and great. England has established
an enormous trade, and England once shut out all
foreign competitors; therefore we must restrict
importations that we NAV make our trade. This
is the logic of the colonial Protectonists taken out
of the cloak of the patriotic sentiment in which it
has been artfully enyeloped.
The argument may be refuted in the simplest
manner, by denying that the present industrial
prosperity of England is, in any sense, the conse-
quence of her past protective policy. If she is now
wealthy and great. it is in spite of her old offences
to the spirit of Free Trade, and not because of
them. To no fiscal enactment is England indebt-
ed for her present high position, but to the inhe-
rent courage industry, and good sense OF her peo-
ple-qualties which no Government has been ena-
bled to stiAe by any laws or restrictions, however
oppressive or absurd. The effect of these laws,
and of almost every law relating to trade or manu-
factures however good its intention, has invaria-
bly, been to depress the native industry; and the
protective statutes, but in their gradual repeal and
relaxation. The concurrent experience Of all the
branches Of British industry proves to US that, pre-
cisely in the same proportion as the protection has
been relaxed has the trade increased and strength
ened and while the history of England gives Us
more than one instance of trade being actually
killed by too much coddling, we challenge the
Protectonsts to quote to us one single case of any
native British industry having been destroyed,
through Free Trade and open competition.
Melbourne Daily Argus, May l9.