the treasurer who carried the chief protectionist duties, used to disclaim being either a protectionist or a free-trader.  The net result of various conflicts has been a tariff which is protectionist, but not highly protectionist.  The duties levied on New Zealand imports represent twenty-four per cent. of the declared value of the goods.  But the highest duties, those on spirits, wine, beer, sugar, tea, and tobacco, are not intentionally protectionist; they are simply revenue duties, though that on beer has undoubtedly helped large and profitable colonial breweries to be established.  English free-traders accept as an axiom that Customs duties cannot produce increased revenue and at the same time stimulate local manufactures.  Nevertheless, under the kind of compromise by which duties of fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five per cent. are levied on so many articles, it does come about that the colonial treasurer gets his revenue while, sheltered by the fiscal hedge, certain colonial manufactures steadily grow up.  The factories of the Colony now employ some 40,000 hands, and their annual output is estimated at ten millions sterling.  Much of this would, of course, have come had the Colony’s ports been free; but the factories engaged in the woollen, printing, clothing, iron and steel, tanning, boot, furniture, brewing, jam-making, and brick and tile-making industries owe their existence in the main to the duties.  Nor would it be fair to regard the Colony’s protection as simply a gigantic job managed by the more or less debasing influence of powerful companies and firms.  It was adopted before such influences and interests were.  It could not have come about, still less could it last, were there not an honest and widespread belief that without duties the variety of industries needful to make a civilized and prosperous nation could not be attained in young countries where nascent enterprises are almost certain to be undercut and undersold by the giant capitalists and cheaper labour of the old world.  Such a belief may conceivably be an economic mistake, but those who hold it need not be thought mere directors or tools of selfish and corrupt rings.  The Colony will not adopt Free Trade unless a change comes over the public mind, of which there is yet no sign; but it is not likely to go further on the road towards McKinleyism.  Its protection, such as it is, was the outcome of compromises, stands frankly as a compromise, and is likely for the present to remain as that.

So long as the Provinces lasted the General Assembly had little or nothing to do with land laws.  When, after abolition, the management of the public estate came into the hands of the central authority, the regulations affecting it were a bewildering host.  Some fifty-four statutes and ordinances had to be repealed.  Nor could uniformity be substituted at once, inasmuch as land was occupied under a dozen different systems in as many different provincial districts.  Only very gradually could these be assimilated, and