1170 ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION [PART V 
in the interests of each Colony concerned, and of the Empire 
collectively, that the Imperial Parliament should be invited 
to legislate in a direction contrary to the established com- 
mercial policy of this country ? 
Her Majesty’s Government are bound to say that the 
measure proposed by the Colonial Governments seems to them 
inconsistent with those principles of free trade which they 
believe to be alone permanently conducive to commercial 
prosperity, nor, as far as they are aware, has any attempt 
been made to show that any great practical benefit is expected 
to be derived from reciprocal tariff arrangements between the 
Australasian Colonies. 
At all events I do not find anywhere among the papers 
which have reached me those strong representations and 
illustrations of the utility or necessity of the measure which 
I think might fairly be expected to be adduced as weighing 
against its undeniable inconveniences. 
It is, indeed, stated in an address before me that the 
prohibition of differential customs treatment ‘ operates to 
the serious prejudice of the various producing interests of 
the Australian Colonies’. 1 understand this and similar 
expressions to mean that it is desired to give a special 
stimulus or premium to the Colonial producers and manu- 
facturers, and to afford them the same advantages in a 
neighbouring Colony over the producers and manufacturers 
of all other parts of the Empire and of foreign countries, as 
they would have within their own Colony under a system of 
protective duties. What is termed reciprocity is thus, in 
reality, protection. 
It is, of course, unnecessary for me to observe that, whilst 
Her Majesty’s Government feel bound to take every proper 
opportunity of urging upon the Colonies, as well as upon 
foreign Governments, the great advantages which they 
believe to accrue to every country which adopts a policy of 
free trade, they have relinquished all interference with the 
imposition by a Colonial Legislature of equal duties upon 
goods from all places, although those duties may really have 
the effect of protection to the native producer. 
But a proposition that, in one part of the Empire, com- 
mercial privileges should be granted to the inhabitants of 
certain other parts of the Empire, to the exclusion and 
prejudice of the rest of Her Majesty’s subjects, is an altogether 
different question, and I would earnestly request your 
Government to consider what effect it may have upon the 
relations between the Colonies and this country.