Just as Protection is losing ground in America, it is
winning it in Australia. The Melbourne correspondent of the Times says that the popular cry during the elections then proceeding was for a 25 or 30-per-cent. duty on every imported article which could be as well produced in Victoria. It is probable that the next Par- liament will be decidedly Protectionist, not only because the klemocracy is too stupid to see that the enhanced price of the article it makes is more than balanced by the enhanced price of everything it buys, but because the people dislike direct taxation. In Sydney already nearly everything a human being can want is taxed 10 per cent. ad valorem, including machinery, that is to say including the very things which are to enable the local manufacturer to compete with the foreigner. The force of ignorance could hardly go farther than that. It is well for England that free trade was tried before we had universal suffrage, and while food was protected
before all things. Even now Coventry wants to tax all the women in England in order to get a bounty on its ribbons.
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