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
