MILL AND PROTECTION.
[To ins EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—Mr. Chamberlain has quoted John Stuart Mill as a supporter of Protection. It may be as well to give Mill's exact words :— " The only case in which, on mere principles of political economy, protecting duties can be defensible, is when they are imposed temporarily (especially in a young and rising nation) in hopes of naturalising a foreign industry in itself perfectly suit- able to the circumstances of the country. The superiority of one country over another in a branch of production often only arises from having begun it sooner."—Mill's "Political Economy," Book V., chap. 10, sec. 1.
And I may be permitted to add that when in 1865 the question of introducing Protection in Victoria was being agitated, Mill was quoted by many speakers as an advocate of Protection, but in reply to an Australian correspondent that distinguished economist wrote :-
I never for a moment thought of recommending or counte- nancing in a new colony, more than elsewhere, a general protec- tive policy, or a system of duties on imported commodities, such as that which has recently passed the representative assembly of your colony. What I had in view was this : If there is some particular branch of industry not hitherto carried on in the country, but which individuals or associations possessed of the necessary capital are ready and desirous to naturalise, and if these persons can satisfy the legislature that, after their work- people are fully trained and the difficulties of the first introduc- tion surmounted, they shall probably be able to produce the article as cheap or cheaper than the price at which it can be imported, but that they cannot do so without the temporary aid either of a subsidy from the Government or of a protecting duty, then it may sometimes be a good calculation for the future interests of the country to make a temporary sacrifice by granting a moderate protecting duty for a certain limited number of years, say ten, or at the very most twenty, during the latter part of which the duty should be on a gradually diminishing scale, and at the end of which it should expire. You see how far this doctrine is from supporting the fabric of protectionist doctrine in behalf of which its aid has been invoked."
I need scarcely add that the " infant " industries of Victoria never grew up, but asked for more and more Protection !—
Newcastle.
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