Page:(Commercial character) The Joseph Fisher lecture in commerce, delivered at the University of Adelaide (IA commercialcharac00jessrich).pdf/27

23 We know that in Australia, there is a very strong party which sees in protection, almost to the verge of exclusion, a panacea for all or nearly all the evils from which we suffer. The feelings of the man who buys are studiously ignored by the extremists of this party. A desire for cheapness, natural in a commercial age, and too often created, or at all events fostered, by the peremptory claims of necessity, is greeted with contumely, and a craving for excellence of material and superiority of workmanship stamps its possessor as hypercritical and unpatriotic. One result of protection will certainly be the production of more than we need, and possibly, under a faulty economic system, more than we can afford to retain for necessary home consumption. We are only beginning to realize the fact that while things are as they are the debtor, be he an individual or be it a state, must work for the creditor, and Australia, having for many years discounted her prospects in a somewhat light-hearted manner, can rehabilitate herself only by increased production, economy, or taxation, or a mixture of them. Our great want is education and educational facilities—moral, physical, rudimentary, economic, technical, artistic, political—but, above all, progressive, for we must never forget that nothing will avail us but material and equipment of the best, nor ignore the fallacy of the dreamer and the fool that all men are equal. Nothing is truer than Pope's dictum, "Some are and must be greater than the rest."

It may interest some of our anti-Asiatic fanatics to know that a leading English Commercial Magazine writes thus:—