ABSTRACT
No less important a part of the policy of the Russell Ministry was to make free trade a truly Imperial policy by introducing it into the tariffs of the colonies as Peel had introduced, more or less successfully, the policy of mod~rate and imperially regulated preference. One of the first measures of the new Ministry was an amending Possessions Act enabling the Colonial Legislatures of North America, the West Indies, and the Mauritius, to repeal the duties imposed on foreign goods by the Acts of 1842 and 1845.3
The form of the Act is significant. Goulburn urged that the right method of procedure was to pass an Imperial Act on free trade lines. He drew a picture of delays, difficulties with the Colonies, embarrassments with foreign countries; and called attention to the precedent that was created by this abandonment of a field of Parliamentary legislation.4 The Chancellor of the Exchequer admitted a theoretical preference for Goulburn's method, but pointed out that it meant depriving the colonies of a portion of their revenues without prior communication with them.s The cumbrousness of the old system of Imperial 'duties of regulation' stood revealed. The thin House which debated this measure and passed it by 47 to 8 took a step of no small importance in Imperial history. The Act marked the beginning of a new system, in whi.ch the whole power of enacting colonial tariffs was left to the legislatures of the colonies, checked by the disallowing power of the Crown. Ce n' est que Ie premier pas qui coute. The Treasury, agreeing that the regulation of rates of duty and the selection of articles for taxation must in
general be left to the local authorities, still spoke of the inadvisability of leaving them power to adopt or to reject regulations or laws relating to such subjects as the commercial intercourse between the Mother Country and the colonies, or of the colonies with one another and with foreign countries. I Not until 1855 did the new Cape Parliament enact its first tariff: until then the regulation of the Cape tariff remained in the hands of the Queen in Council. Not until the passage of the Australian Colonies Government Act in 1850 were the Australian Legislatures free from the restrictions-not always, it is true, enforced--of the Act of 1822; 2 and then a statutory prohibition of differential duties remained. It is none the less true that with the passage of the Possessions Act of 1846 a great step was taken along the road that led to colonial tariff autonomy. In 1778 Parliament agreed only to impose duties 'for the regulation of commerce': in 1846 it in effect agreed no longer to impose these. The Act was passed in the name of free trade, but it remained on the statute-book when the colonies claimed to depart from free trade in the name of tariff autonomy.
