simply revenue duties,
though that on beer has undoubtedly helped large and profitable
colonial breweries to be established. English free-traders accept as
an axiom that Customs duties cannot produce increased revenue and at
the same time stimulate local manufactures. Nevertheless, under the
kind of compromise by which duties of fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five
per cent. are levied on so many articles, it does come about that the
colonial treasurer gets his revenue while, sheltered by the fiscal
hedge, certain colonial manufactures steadily grow up. The factories
of the Colony now employ some 40,000 hands, and their annual output
is estimated at ten millions sterling. Much of this would, of course,
have come had the Colony's ports been free; but the factories engaged
in the woollen, printing, clothing, iron and steel, tanning, boot,
furniture, brewing, jam-making, and brick and tile-making industries
owe their existence in the main to the duties. Nor would it be fair to
regard the Colony's protection as simply a gigantic job managed by the
more or less debasing influence of powerful companies and firms. It
was adopted before such influences and interests were. It could not
have come about, still less could it last, were there not an honest
and widespread belief that without duties the variety of industries
needful to make a civilized and prosperous nation could not be
attained in young countries where nascent enterprises are almost
certain to be undercut and undersold by the giant capitalists and
cheaper labour of the old world. Such a belief may conceivably be
an economic mistake, but those who hold it need not be thought mere
directors or tools of selfish and corrupt rings. The Colony will not
adopt Free Trade unless a change comes over the public mind, of which
there is yet no sign; but it is not likely to go further on the road
towards McKinleyism. Its protection, such as it is, was the outcome
of compromises, stands frankly as a compromise, and is likely for the
present to remain as that.

So long as the Provinces lasted the General Assembly had little or
nothing to do with land laws. When, after abolition, the management of
the public estate came into the hands of the central authority, the
regulations affecting it were a bewildering host. Some fifty-four
statutes and ordinances had to be repealed. Nor could uniformity be
substituted at once, inasmuch as land was occupied under a dozen
different systems in as ma