THE FISCAL POLICY OF THE EMPIRE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1 SIR,—All educated Australians view with profound astonish- ment the apparent conversion to the Protective fallacy of Mr. Chamberlain and the Times newspaper. It may not be generally known to your readers that although the immense undeveloped natural sources of wealth of a State like Victoria have enabled her to sustain the enormous drain on her material vitality which the Protective system has entailed, a growing and deepening sense of the madness of this policy is producing a healthy Free-trade feeling. So much is this the case that the Protectionist politicians who have battened on the ignorance of the electors on fiscal questions are losing ground in public estimation every day. We are, however, confident that the British electors will never accept this preferential fallacy. They will, we trust, look for further material prosperity, not to the building up of monopolies, but to a further extension of the great Cobdenite principles of freedom by a system of ground-rent taxation calculated to free the opportunities of production as a corollary to the right freely to exchange.—I am, Sir,
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