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I can understand Senator Crawford thinking that it is the duty on package tea that causes the employment to which I have referred. Some persons seem to be absolutely fascinated with the 'Protectionist doctrine. When a boy I used to read a good deal of verse, and in this connexion recall Browning's charming poem, The PiedPiper of Hamelin. Honorable senators will recollect how this marvellous piper, by the sound of his pipes, first cleared the tow of rats, the only one of the vermin escaping death in the Weser being an old rat, who told later how at the first shrill notes of the pipe he heard sounds as of the preparation of all kinds of good food. Subsequently, the piper led away .the enraptured children of the town to a mountain where a cavern opened and closed behind them, leaving outside one poor crippled lad, who ever afterwards regretted that he could not have followed his companions to the joyous land promised by the piper, where everything was new and strange and delightful. The Protectionists resemble those who were thus enchanted. They are piped to about good wages and conditions, and follow blindly to their destruction those who play to them of the good things of Protection. All the protection that has been given by the Tariff does not cause as much employment as comes from allowing tea to be imported free. We used to hear in Victoria about the ringing of the anvils and the flaring of the furnaces that would follow the adoption of Protection, but the statistics show that this State has grown in population more slowly than any other in the Commonwealth. Item agreed to. Item 101 (Vegetables, dried, &c), and item 102 (Vegetables, n.e.i.), agreed to. Item 103- Waxes - Vegetable, for manufacturing- purposes, as prescribed by departmental by-laws, free. . - The imposition of a duty of id. per lb. on shoe-maker's wax is a very heavy duty, being equivalent to an ad valorem rate of 100 per cent. In sub-item b we have another case in which provision is made for prescription by departmental by-law. Since the Minister has had nearly twenty-four hours to look into this matter, he may now be in a position to inform us of the result of his mature consideration of the position.