New Zealand's Position.

It is an extraordinary position that Australia, with her high tariff wall against island produce, should be able with the foreigners to collar the trade that should rightly belong to New Zealand, which admits island produce free, whether it comes from British or from foreign possessions, and has the additional advantage of being much closer to Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and the Eastern Pacific than Australia. Why is it? Practically the only things that island people now buy from us are produce and meats. Scarcely any manufactured articles are exported. "Things are too dear in New Zealand,"the island trader will tell you if asked why he doesn't make more of his purchases at the place where he sells his fruit. The Sydney man, the German, the American, and Frenchman work on the lines of small profits and quick returns, but the New Zealand merchant want to get rich all of a hurry. This, at any rate, is what the island people say, and after a study of the price lists, and failing to find any other satisfactory reason by which the dwinding away of the trade can be explained, I am compelled to come to the same conclusion Why things should be so much dearer here than in Sydney, I am not going to attempt to explain.

In the matter of freights, however, it should here be pointed out New Zealand gets no advantage ovar Australia—as far as Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga are concerned—though she lies so much nearer to those island. One would naturally think that to carry good, say, to Tonga, which is only a four days' run from Auckland, would coat less than to carry them for 14 days from Sydney, But curiously enough, it doesn't, This preferential treatment of Australian goods, for that is what it amounts to, operates very unfairly against New Zealand. The Union Steam Ship Company, as everyone known, has a monopoly of this trade, and, being a New Zealand company, the favouritism shown to Australia is one of those things that is hard to understand. There page 5 [unclear: ve] indeed, quite a lot of freight a [unclear: noma] for the carriage of goods to [unclear: Rarora] where the Union Company has no petition 40s per ton is charged; to twice the distance, where there is [unclear: spetition], the rate is only 35s. The [unclear: reply] in Rarotonga cannot, of couirse, [unclear: in the] equity of this. Lots of other in-case could be given.