PROTECTION IN CANADA. PROTECTION IN CANADA.
A proposal, for the revival of protection, broached in Canada, Las brought out again the Free-trade veteran, General Thompson, who has contributed to the Bradford Advertiser a letter, handling the subject with much of his ancient force and humour. " Nothing, it appears, will satisfy some of the Canadians, but setting up the cry of protection against Great Britain, and determining to keep out British produce when the things can be raised at a loss in Canada. For evi- dently in this case only can there be occasion for taking any pains. No man needs counsel to buy the things in Canada when they can be bought there cheapest. It is when they cannot that the wise man stands up and says, Here am I ready to make the things dearer and worse, and I hope you will be so good as to pay me, because I shall like it better.' Perhaps it was a providential act, that if there are any lingering longings after protec- tion to dear goods at home, they should be caricatured by the movement described. Within the life of man, it was the rampant belief of British lions of all kinds that the colonists ought not to make a twopenny nail for them- selves, if these was anybody at home whose interest it was to make it dearer and worse. And at last the thing grew so manifestly stupid that it was given up by what may be called general consent, scarcely a tail wagging in token of regret. But now some of the Canadians are for trying on the cast- off clothes. And now to examine this ghost of a defunct insanity. Some- body stands up and says to the Canadians—men never held deficient in sharpness, though they may not have attained to the celebrity of the other aide of the border—' Here are things which you can obtain from England for two shillings or two shillings' worth, and we come here to offer to make you them for three. We promise you we will ; and we call upon you by your affection to the land where you were born to come to our shops.' Why IS it to be a gain to the country, that we shall give three shillings to A and B to make us dear goods, when we might as well have given two shillings of it to C and D to make the goods which would have brought us the things from England, and the other shilling to E and F to make us something that we might have eaten, or drunk, or worn, or put into our pockets, or given to our little boys and girls, or bestowed in some other of those ingenious ways for which an acute people is seldom eta loss ? We have a shrewd suspicion there is a fraud, a trick, an attempt at genteel robbery without the risk of the constable. It will be odd if protection can take root and grow in a new country, when it could not hold its own under all the advantages of the old."
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