CHAP. vi] TRADE RELATIONS AND CURRENCY 1181
argued all over again the question as regards the question
of right to have treaties with differential duties in the case of
foreign countries as well, but in 1872 a conference at Sydney
representing all the Colonies and New Zealand asked for
powers as to Australasian inter-colonial duties only, and
these were conceded by the Imperial Act of 1873! which,
however, contained still the prohibition of differential duties
in case of other British territories and foreign states and
duties contrary to treaties.
The clauses of the Imperial Acts as to differential duties
were not finally removed until the passing of the Act of
1895.2 The passing of that Act was the outcome of the
Ottawa Conference of 1894, to which allusion will be made
elsewhere. The conference asserted the principle of pre-
ference among the different parts of the Empire, and de-
manded the abrogation of the treaties of 1862 with Belgium
and of 1865 with the Zollverein, which hampered the granting
by the Colonies of a preference to the Mother Country. It
was not deemed expedient at that time by the Government
of the day to accede to that request, but they yielded to the
further request that all legal fetters on inter-colonial prefer-
ance should be removed, and they accordingly repealed by the
Act of 1895 the proviso to the Act of 18733 which lays down
that “no new duty shall be imposed upon and no existing duty
shall be remitted as to the importation into any of the Austra-
lian Colonies of any article, the produce or manufacture of any
particular country, which shall not be equally imposed upon
or remitted as to the importation into such Colony of the like
article the produce or manufacture of any other country ’.
It is somewhat curious that the Imperial Government
should have treated Canada so differently in this regard in
the early days before federation : it is clear from the cases
which were cited by the New Zealand Government ¢ in the
L336 & 37 Vict., ¢. 22; Hansard, cexv. 1998-2011; cexvi. 153-8; cf.
Holland, Imperium eo Libertas, pp. 288 seq.
* 58 & 59 Vict. c. 3; Hansard, xxxi. 646, 647, 899, 852, 1533, 1534.
* Also 13 & 14 Vict. ¢. 59, a. 27.
* Parl. Pap., C."703, pp. 8 seq. Cf. House of Commons Papers, 1846, xxvii.
27-55; 1856, xliv. 169-71; cf. 1864, x1. 697; Adderley, Colonial Policy, p. 58.
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