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firm, working to meet its liabilities,' commit an act so devoid of 

 ioresiglit and reason — building up to-day to destroy to-morrow ; 

 erecting a structure to witness its immediate fall, as the supporting 

 buttresses, in the shape of the export bonus on the surplus they 

 had created, were struck down ? What can be expected hut failure 

 until these buttresses be restored in some form ? It is not too 

 late yet, and it is only asking that bare and tardy justice be done 

 to a great industry and all connected with it, which was slowly 

 but surely working out its own destiny and steadily achieving 

 success (as the increase from 1881 to the present time proves), 

 when it was unnaturally forced by Parliament, and people were 

 encouraged to plant without knowledge and without a market for 

 their produce. G-rowers must continue to be placed at a disad- 

 vantage, and disaster must result to many, who will lament the 

 day they ever started to plant a vineyard, unless steps be taken 

 by the Government to provide the opportunity for acquiring tech- 

 nical education in an industry so new to the great majority of 

 British people, and also unless an efEcctive channel be opened up 

 for the bonus-produced surplus. This is only just to the old 

 growers (as well as the new ones) whose unaided efforts in the 

 past resulted successfully, but who, after all their enterprise and 

 labour in operfing up a new industry and demonstrating its 

 possibilities, are now threatened to be overwhelmed by disaster. 

 In urging this subject I may say, as an individual gTOwer, I 

 do not approve of the bonus system. It would probably have 

 been infinitely better had none ever been oflfered, and had the 

 money been expended in the establishment of colleges and prac- 

 tical schools, where that knowledge which is the result of centuries 

 of experience in the old world might have been imparted, such 

 schools might readily have been made self-supporting, and the 

 score of cost need scarcely be counted with. 



The Road to Prosperity . — It is only right and just that intelli- 

 gent legislation should now come to our assistance and remedy 

 the evils of over and under legislation in the past ; and I am 

 certain as that the sun will rise to-morrow that intelligent assis- 

 tance will be money well invested by the State. It will result 

 in providing employment and developing the resources of the 

 country. If only one million of the money which has been 

 frittered away in the past in costly unproductive works, and in 

 assuming the manners and customs of a nation with as many 

 millions of population as we have hundreds of thousands, and in 

 a huge and extravagantly paid Government service, had been set 

 aside to aid in the development of rural productive industries, 

 there would be no cry of poverty and depression throughout the 

 length and breadth of the land as is heard to-day. Work in 

 abundance would have been provided for the workless, and peace 

 and contentment reign instead of misery and poverty; and those 



