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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 21

[Prospects of Free Trade in the British Colonies and the United States]

Prospects of Free Trade in the British Colonies and the United States.—The Hon. David A. Wells—whose speech, delivered before the Cobden Club last year, on the results of Protection in the United States, has since been effectively circulated in all the colonies through the medium of the Club—has undertaken to contribute a series of papers on the same subject to the Melbourne Argus, which will be republished with a view to assist the Free Trade movement recently inaugurated in Australia by the Legislature of New South Wales, under the direction of Mr. Parkes. With reference to the United States, Mr. Wells, in a letter addressed to Mr. T. B. Potter, M.P., as Hon. Secretary of the Cobden Club, states his belief that after the defeat of the Protectionist interests in the last session of Congress, another Bill increasing duties will never again page 44 become law. "My predictions of last year," he adds, "concerning the rapid progress of Free Trade are being more than verified. The next Presidential election will show Free Trade as one of the great political elements, and I think we shall elect a President and a Congress that will give Protection its death-stroke." Mr. Wells was this year elected by the French Institute to fill the place of the late Mr. John Stuart Mill in the Department of Moral and Political Science.—London Daily News, July 18, 1874.

Mr. Wells was also nominated this year by the Senate of the University of Oxford for the honorary degree of D.C.L., but was unable to be in England to receive the honour which it was proposed to confer upon him.

Free Trade in Australia.—Mr. William Downie has just received a very gratifying letter from Mr. Thomas Bayley Potter, M.P., Hon. Secretary of the Cobden Club of London, having reference to the good effect of a Free Trade policy in Australia. W. H. Duncan, Esq., Collector of Customs, Sydney, writes to Mr. Potter as follows:—"I do myself the honour to thank the Committee of the Cobden Club, through you, for a copy of the excellent speech of the Hon. David A. Wells, delivered before the Club, June 28, 1873. This admirable exposure of the workings of Protection in America will be of immense service in the Australian colonies, in some of which protective duties still prevail. In accordance, therefore, with what I assume to be the wish of your Club, I have taken measures to have this speech widely circulated."—Boston Post, July 1, 1874.