The True Mainspring of Wealth and Prosperity is Employment.

Without Protection, manufactures cannot exist in New Zealand: it must remain a country only producing raw material and food. Our Public Works policy commenced in 1876, gave employment to our people, raised wages, and provided a market for our producers. What is to take its place and pay interest on our borrowed money unless we maintain a large population and produce wealth by skilled labour. It is admitted there is nothing; yet we are told that manufactures will grow of their own accord if we only leave them alone. Let anyone who believes this and has a few hundred pounds to spare, just try the effect of putting it into some unprotected industry, and let him compete for a year or two with England's cheap labour, and see how his balance-sheet comes out at the end of the time; I don't think he will try a second experiment.

Every person cannot be a farmer. Freetrade leaves no alternative for the population of young countries to be other than husbandmen, soil cultivators, producers of food and raw material. Every father knows that his sons are not all born with the same aptitudes and the same tastes. In a new country, Protection is the only means that will prevent some in every family from being encumbrances and drones; the more channels that are open for their diverse tastes the less likely are children to be a burden on their parents; yet without Protection, if they have not the taste for agricultural pursuits, there is nothing left for them to do. Farmers' sons, too, are born with diverse instincts: some for agriculture, some for mechanics, some for trades, some page 11 for professions, &c. Providence never intended the whole of Australasians to be shepherds and the whole of England to be manufacturers; yet under Freetrade such would be the case to a great extent. Protection, by opening a way for manufacturing industries in the Colonies, would give scope for every variety of natural gifts.