in a
friendly open way, and on terms of perfect equality, all the questions
in which there is a possibility of conflict. The practicability of the
plan has been proved by experience. It is impossible to exaggerate its
good effects. By frequent and friendly meetings knowledge is acquired
on both sides which could be gained in no other way, and suspicion is
changed to sympathy. I hope that no bad influences of false pride on
one side, or of unmerited distrust on the other, will deter the
employers and the employed of South Australia from rapidly bringing
into operation the excellent method of averting disputes, which Courts
of Conciliation both in England and on the Continent of Europe have
never failed to provide.

'Free trade and Protection are topics which wide-spread depression has
thrust into prominence of late. The present Government in England, in
deference to the demands of Protectionists, appointed a Royal
Commission. Its members were the representatives of conflicting views,
and after an exhaustive inquiry they separated without changing the
opinions with which they entered upon their labours. We may draw the
inference that the subject is not quite so simple as the most earnest
partisans in the controversy would wish us to believe. For the United
Kingdom I am a convinced Freetrader. I admit that the old country,
where half the population subsists on imported food, which must be
paid for in exported goods, is not on all fours with a colony capable
of producing in abundance all the necessaries of life for a population
infinitely more numerous than at present exists within its borders.
But while the conditions are different the fact remains that under a
protective system customers are precluded from buying in the cheapest
market, agriculture is heavily charged for the benefit of a less
important interest, and labour artificially diverted from those
spheres of industry in which it might be employed to the greatest
advantage. Certain it is that cycles of commercial depression would
not be averted, but rather prolonged and aggravated, by a policy of
protection. Impressed with the weight of evidence on this point, the
recent Royal Commission of Trade declined to recommend Protection as a
panacea for commercial depression in the United Kingdom, and I
hesitate to recommend it to the Chamber of Commerce in Adelaide.
While, however, I would deprecate the imposition of burdensome import
duties for the purposes of Protecti