Printing Paper.

In this case a Government bonus of £500 for the first fifty tons will lapse if not claimed before the 31st December, 1886. Two previous bonuses, in 1875 and 1883, lapsed without any claimants. Last year 39,073cwt. of printing paper was imported, to the value of £67,840. No import duty is levied, and it is not probable that the Legislature—which would regard a duty in this case as a "tax upon knowledge"—could be induced to include it in the dutiable goods of the tariff. It is not easy to see how, even supposing every newspaper in the colony undertook to buy all their paper from a New Zealand mill for five years—a contingency not likely to happen—it would pay to-establish such a mill in the colony. In order to compete in cheapness and quality with the English, Scotch, and foreign houses it is said that the buildings and plant of a printing-paper mill in New Zealand would cost £50,000. Nor could this colony depend upon customers in the Australian Colonies, where paper is imported from the Home country free of duty, and where one mill already exists, though with a limited output. Printing paper has never been produced in New Zealand except in one instance—experimentally and unsuccessfully—at Mataura. It is an industry which it were vain at present to hope to establish.