CHAP. VI - PROTECTION

Summary

The greatest of all democratic stumbling-blocks is said to be Protection.

“Encourage native industry!” the colonial shopkeepers write up; “Show your patriotism, and buy colonial goods!” is painted in huge letters on a shopfront at Castlemaine. In England, some unscrupulous traders, we are told, write “From Paris” over their English goods, but such dishonesty in Victoria takes another shape; there we have “Warranted colonial made” placed over imported wares, for many will pay a higher price for a colonial product confessedly not more than equal to the foreign, such is the rage for Native Industry, and the hatred of the “Antipodean doctrine of Free Trade.”

Many former colonists who live at home persuade themselves, and unfortunately persuade also the public in England, that the Protectionists are weak in the colonies. So far is this from being the case in either Victoria or New South Wales, that in the former colony I found that in the Lower House the Free Traders formed but three-elevenths of the Assembly, and in New South Wales the pastoral tenants of the Crown may be said to stand alone in their support of Free Trade. Some of the squatters go so far as to declare that none of the public men of the colonies really believe in the advantages of Protection, but that they dishonestly accept the principle, and undertake to act upon it when in office, in order to secure the votes of an ignorant majority of labourers, who are themselves convinced that Protection means high wages.