1168 ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION [PART YV 
well upon them, because as dealing with a limited list of 
raw materials and produce not imported to those Colonies 
from Europe, they are hardly, if at all, applicable to the 
present case, and I shall refer only to the Act passed by 
the Dominion of Canada in 1867 (31 Vict. ¢. 7), which is the 
enactment principally relied upon as a precedent. 
Schedule D of this Act exempts from duty certain specified 
raw materials and produce of the British North American 
Provinces, and the third section enacts that ‘any other 
articles than those mentioned in Schedule D, being of the 
growth and produce of the British North American Provinces, 
may be specially exempted from Customs duties by order of 
the Governor in Council". 
This, which was one of the first Acts of the Legislature of 
the newly-constituted Dominion in its opening session, was 
passed in the expectation that, at no distant date, the other 
Possessions of Her Majesty in North America would become 
part of the Dominion, and the assent of Her Majesty’s 
Government to a measure passed in circumstances so peculiar 
and exceptional cannot form a precedent of universal and 
necessary application ; although I am not prepared to deny 
that the Australasian Governments are justified in citing it 
as an example of the admission of the principle of differen- 
tial duties. 
With reference to the second question, as to the existence 
of any Treaty, the obligations of which might be inconsistent 
with compliance by Her Majesty with the present proposal, 
the Board of Trade have informed me that this point could 
only be raised in connexion with the terms of the Treaty 
between this country and the Zollverein of 1865, extended 
through the operation of the ‘ most-favoured-nation’ Article 
to all other countries possessing rights conferred by that 
stipulation. 
The Seventh Article of that Treaty, which extends the 
provisions of previous Articles to the Colonies and Foreign 
Possessions of Her Majesty, contains the following pro- 
vision :— 
“In the Colonies and Possessions the produce of the states 
of the Zollverein shall not be subject to any higher or other 
import duties than the produce of the United Kingdom of 
Great Britain and Ireland, or of anv other country, of the 
like kind.’ 
I am advised that this Seventh Article may be held not to 
preclude Her Majesty from ‘ permitting the Legislature of a 
British Possession to impose on articles being the produce