ABSTRACT
Lord Grey also endeavoured, with some success, to introduce free trade principles into the colonies unaffected by the Act. He urged them upon Van Diemen's Land in 1847, but it was not until 1852 that differential duties were abolished, and even then one on spirits was retained. In South Australia Major Robe was inclined to favour the abolition of the preference of 5 per cent., but feared at first that he might be trespassing upon 'some principle of policy required by the Mother Country from her colonies'.4 Lord Grey hastened to assure him that the very reverse was the case, and in the next Customs Ordinance (No. II of 1848) the differential duties disappeared. We have seen that they were expressly forbidden to the new Legislative Councils of the Australian Colonies Government Act. Ceylon abolished the preferences in 1848. By 1852 colonial preference had disappeared from all the colonies but West Australia and the Cape, and in the Cape, curiously enough, the instrument which still maintained it was an Imperial Order in Council.
