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ance should be removed, and they accordingly repealed by the 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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