RELATED TOPICS 261 
cates of the duty on imported wheat. The millers are 
more enthusiastic for the retention of the duty than are 
the farmers themselves; but it is primarily for the 
farming community (so these protectionist enthusiasts 
tell us), that the agitation for protection is maintained 
by the millers. Some have gone so far as to say that 
a community should be self-sufficing. The elementary 
principles of international trade are sufficient to prove 
the absurdity of this opinion. Absolute self-sufficiency 
would mean the total absence of imports. The argument 
need not be pursued further except to state that, other 
things remaining the same, no community can have an 
export trade unless it has a corresponding import trade. 
Again, if we consider the argument in its less extreme 
form — self-sufficiency as to wheat production — its 
refutation is no less easy. If other countries can send 
wheat to New Zealand in sufficient supplies cheaper than 
it can be produced here, would it be disastrous to this 
couuntry to import a great part of its wheat supply? 
So long as the supplies from abroad were forthcoming 
with regularity, we should surely benefit if wheat prices 
were lowered, even though the wheat industry were to 
decay, and wheat growers to sustain a temporary loss, 
that is, assuming that other things were equal. How 
far we can expect regular supplies from abroad will be 
discussed in another section on this subject. But we 
can readily see that, ceteris paribus, it would not be 
disastrous were we forced to make regular annual 
importations of wheat. The degree of probability of 
such a necessity will be made clear in discussing the 
next argument in support of protection, noted below. 
Another argument put forward is that the abolition 
of the duty would lead to the decay of wheat production 
in New Zealand. It is alleged that New Zealand would 
become dependent on Australia for her supplies of wheat, 
