CANADIAN PROTECTION.
MB RIGHT'S question to the Colonial Secretary on Thursday, has given rise to a general chorus of complaint that Canada will persist in so calmly ignoring in her fiscal policy the commercial interests of the mother-country, while she continues to profit by the tie between us, and to indulge in so strong a sentiment of loyalty towards us ; and the opportunity of course has been taken to include other Dependencies besides Canada,—especially Victoria, whose taste for Protection is well known,—in the reproach. We confess we think this sort of complaint both intrinsically unreasonable, and untimely. No one can regret more than we do the Protectionist illusions of our great democratic Colonies. They are not, perhaps, unnatural,—for how can it be natural that illusions which have deceived in turn almost every nation of the earth, should be wholly powerless over the shrewd- ness of these hard-working, half-educated peoples ?—but they are not the less, but the more, mischievous for being natural. If they were not natural, they would not be so hard to up- root. But profoundly as we regret the lavish growth of this weed of Protectionism, which springs up so thickly in every land and especially in any land of half-developed and nascent energies, we must say it seems to us at once childish and unmanly to make the Protectionism of our self-governing colonies the ground of so much political and moral complaint. Sir Michael Beach tells us that the Colonial Office decided in the time of his predecessor that the Viceroy of Canada should no longer be directed to reserve, as a matter of course, Bills imposing differential duties on the products of other countries for the sanction of her Majesty's Government. And we confess we think this decision quite right. It is absurd to stop half-way in carrying out the policy of leaving our Colonies to take their own course. To disallow differential duties, and allow protective duties which are not differential, would be futile. Every protective duty is in fact a differential duty, imposed in favour of some product of the country im- posing it. And why there should be any distinction in prin- ciple between permitting a colony to favour its own products, and permitting it to favour the products of one rather than another of its neighbours, we utterly fail to see. Directly the protective policy is initiated at all, a war of tariffs is really begun. And to draw fine distinctions between the various modes of waging that war,—to deny to a colony its right to enter on a policy of fiscal retaliation or reciprocity towards special countries, while permitting it to enter on a policy of dis- couragement and prohibition to all countries alike, seems to us, we confess, thoroughly unmeaning. If we had reserved to our- selves the right of complete Free-trade with all our Colonies, in giving them their political emancipation, that, though, as we believe, a thoroughly impracticable policy, would have meant something. If we had reserved our right to control entirely their Customs duties as a part of our fiscal foreign policy, that, too, though wholly and absurdly impracticable towards a colony otherwise permitted to govern itself, would have meant a good deal. But to pick and choose between one degree of Protectionism and another degree, after the right of regulating their fiscal policy for themselves has been conceded in general, seems to us utterly without meaning ; indeed, an attempt to cling to a shadow of control, after the substance has been frankly given up. It is straining at the gnat and swallowing the camel, to let any of our Colonies put what Customs' duties they like on any imported article, so long as they put on the same duty wherever it comes from ; yet to quarrel with them because they choose to put a heavier duty on it if it comes from one source, than they put on if it comes from another. If unscientific caprice is to be permitted to self-governed States at all—as, of course, it must be—you must not draw fine distinctions between one shade of it and another.
But if this be granted, it still seems to be thought that we have a sentimental grievance against our Colonies, because while they make such professions of loyalty and good-will to the mother-country, they will not take our commercial advantage into account when they settle their tariff. But this is thoroughly unreasonable. Those who talk in this way do not consider what Parliamentary self-government really means, how indissolubly the commercial policy of a free government is bound up with all its other policy, how impos- sible it is for men who have been deciding hundreds of questions for themselves in accordance with their own view of their own advantage, to pull themselves up sud- denly when it comes to the inevitable consequence of what they have so decided, only because that consequence will not be in harmony with the wants and wishes of the mother-country. Would the mother-country ever dream, for instance, of making a similar sacrifice for any of her colonies ? Supposing it were at any time believed by the British people that by giving up our Free-trade policy and putting a differential duty on American as distinguished from Canadian corn, and on South- American as distinguished from Colonial wool, we could greatly gratify Canada and the Australian Colonies, and even contri- bute to their prosperity, would the British Parliament ever dream for a moment of taking such a course, on such a ground ? Of course not, and though it is clearly much wiser to reject a Protectionist policy in favour of a Free-trade policy, than to reject a Free-trade policy in favour of a Protectionist policy, the superior wisdom of the course is not now the question. The question is,--What can be and ought to be expected from a country wrongly convinced, no doubt, but still convinced, of the superior wisdom of Protection, in deference to the mere feelings and wishes of another country, united to it by ties of race and empire ? We main- tain that it is just as absurd to expect from such a dependency the waiver of a Protectionist policy of great importance, in deference to the supposed interests and the clear wishes of the mother-country, as it would be to expect from the mother- country the waiver of her own Free-trade policy, in defer- ence to the supposed interests and the clear wishes of her colonies and dependencies. It is not politics, it is not common- sense, to look for such sentimental sacrifices in such a region. A State which has made up its mind, however wrongly, that a Protectionist policy is essential to its prosperity, is just as little to be expected to make great inroads on that policy in deference to the wishes of the Supreme Government, as the Supreme Government ought to be expected to make great in- roads on its Free-trade policy in deference to the wishes of de- pendencies. But it may be asked,—Is nothing more owed by the colony to the mother-country, who takes the military re- sponsibility of the Empire, than is owed by the mother-country to the colony, who takes upon herself nothing of the kind? The answer is,—that, in the first place, we have done all in our power of late years,—and perhaps very wisely,—to make our Colonies feel that they must, as far as possible at least, depend on themselves even for their own military de- fence ; and next, that the kind of return which we ought to expect for our provisional protection from invasion, is their similar willingness, of which we have had plenty of evidence, to supplement our military resources, in case of a great war, by their aid. It is not reasonable to expect that our Colonies should express their gratitude for our protection by what they think commercial sacrifices. That is a thoroughly mercantile view of the relation, and a very false one too. For loyal defence, loyal assistance is the natural return. For loyal sentiments in the mother-country, loyal senti- ment in the Colonies is the natural return. But to expect Canada or any other country to buy our protec- tion by adopting a commercial policy which to her seems ruinous, is at least as unnatural and unreasonable as to expect that private devotion should be requited by money, and love by wealth. Let us leave Canada at liberty to make her own
blunders, and also her own discoveries as to those blunders, without complicating the matter by reproaches which are out of taste, as well as out of due season.
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