The Argentine is only three we ks from London, and com potes with us in meat. And these countries wore onts in which there ■<ve cheaper labor and cheaper lands than there are with ns. The Argen tine is a country that we have good cause to fear. It has vast advantages over us, and we shall have to utilise everything we can to counteract it. There is no equality in the struggle —it is like a contest between a small man and a giant. We must bo careful and not trifle our interests away ; thc.se who do so will lay up heavy dis advantages for New Zealand, He thought that among the things we ought to do were these : We ought to try and obtain

REPRESENTATION IN the imperial PARLIAMENT along with the other colonies. We bad suffered great losses in the past owing to the want of this. Look at the Pacific and how its advantages to us had been ignored. Foreigners had been allowed to lake possession of island after island there, instead of all the unclaimed islands being brought under British dominion. Not only had we foreign neighbors in consequence, but the market we ought to have had had been-closed to us, and we had to submit to the Old World as well. He would also like to sneak of

THE TREATIES that had been ■ made with foreign countries. Lord Palmerston had made treaties with Germany and Belgium to the effect that goods from those countries should be ad mitted into British colonies at no higher rates of duty than those colonies levied on goods from Eng land or each other. But that de stroyed any chance of reciprocity. We could not make terms with tho other colonies or with the Old Country as to advantages we might like to give them, He- was glad to see that Sir Wilfrid Lauricr, the Premier of Canada, had taken action in this matter, and, by offering to give special advantages to British goods imported into Canada, had secured the denunciation of these treaties by Lord Salisbury. So that now, for the first time in our history, we can reciprocate with the Old Country or other colonies. 