In a speech which one of the speakers made after a sumptuous dinner, he openly alluded to this subject, and gave a hint that the Australian States might in course of time repeal some of their duties and so admit English products. I shall never forget the manly tone in which two speakers—one from Victoria and one from Melbourne—replied to this quiet hint. The speaker from Victoria went so far as to say that he was primarily responsible for the imposition of those duties in his State, and defended them as absolutely necessary for the protection of home industries. The Melbourne speaker replied also in a similar tone and asked permission to manage their own affairs in their own way, as that was the truest way to prosperity for every nation. No English speaker replied to these remarks.
Agricultural distress is as great as the distress in towns. Farms are becoming less and less paying, because foreign corn can be imported into England and sold at a less price than what the English produce can sell for. The only way to prevent this would be to impose a protective duty on foreign corn, to re-impose corn laws, in fact, which free-trading England can never do. For the exclusion of foreign corn from the market would immediately send up the price of bread,—and while the growers would gain by this, the vast majority of Englishmen who are not agriculturists but labourers and consumers would suffer. England is a free-trader through self-interest, as other nations having large agricultural populations, and with manufacturing industry less developed, reject free-trade through self interest. To
