“Yes,” replied the doctor, “that is the case; and I suppose the examination will be a light one for us, as we are going out of a protection colony into a free trade one. If we were going the other way, the custom house officials would be more particular.”
“How is that?” Ned asked.
“Why, don’t you see?” the doctor answered, “a protection country is on the lookout for goods that may interfere with its manufacturing interests; the free trade one has no such care for its manufacturing industries, but levies its duties on articles of luxury principally. When you come into the United States, your baggage is examined much more carefully than when you go into England. England is a free trade country, while our own is a protection one; at least it has been for the greater part of the time since it began its existence.”
“It is rather a strange circumstance,” remarked Ned, “that two colonies of the same country, lying side by side, and one of them an offshoot of the other, should be so radically different in their tariff laws. How do you account for it, sir?”
“We are treading on dangerous ground,” replied the doctor, “as it is not prudent for a traveler in foreign lands to talk politics; but as we are quite by ourselves, we may be permitted to discuss the subject a little. Victoria, as you are aware, is an offshoot from the colony of New South Wales, from which it was separated in August, 1851. I don’t know anything about the matter, but presume that the origin of the differences in tariffs between the two colonies grew out of the opposition of the new to the old. There has always been a great deal of jealousy between them, and as New South Wales had a free trade policy, it was the most natural thing in the world that the jealous young colony of Victoria should adopt a protection one. In each of the colonies there is a strong party opposed to its tariff policy; in Victoria there is a goodly number of free-traders, while in New South Wales there is an equally good number of protectionists. Whatever a man’s views are, in regard to free trade or protection, it is generally useless to attempt to change them by argument; and if he is a skilled debater, he can give you facts and figures to demonstrate, with great clearness, the correctness of his views. On that point I can tell you what was to me an amusing story.”
“Several years ago, when the financial authorities of the two colonies had made their annual reports, the two documents were taken by a free trade writer for an English magazine, and out of them, by the use of the figures and facts that they contained, there was constructed an admirable article, demonstrating, with great clearness, the advantages of free trade in New South Wales. Almost simultaneously in an American newspaper appeared a similar article, drawn from the same facts and figures, which demonstrated with equal clearness and with equal conclusiveness the advantages of protection in Victoria. There was not a weak point in either of the articles, and the curious thing was that they were drawn from the same sources. Each writer showed that the colony whose tariff policy he had favored was far more prosperous than the other, and was making progress steadily, while the other was running behind.”
“It’s pretty much the same in our own country, is it not?” queried Harry. “It seems to me that I have read articles in the New York Tribune and the New York Evening Post that were flatly contradictory of each other on the subject of the tariff.”
“Yes; that is quite likely the case, as both of the papers you name are ready to debate the subject, and it is evident that the writers upon both sides of the question believe what they say. I don’t think it worth our while to enter into the abstract question here, and so we’ll drop it for something else. You are aware, I presume, that we have to make a change of train at the frontier on account of the different gauges of the railways of the two colonies.”
“Yes, sir, I was aware of that,” said Harry; “one track is six inches wider than the other.”