ATTEMPT TO DAMAGE NEW ZEALAND CREDIT.

Auckland Star, Volume XI, Issue 3240, 8 December 1880, Page 3

ATTEMPT TO DAMAGE NEW ZEALAND CREDIT.

The small loan of £20,000 for the little town of Invercargill was considerably more than covered. It was announced that no tenders would be received at less than £98 per £100. The whole amount was alloted at prices ranging from the minimum up to £102 10s. Tenders at the minimum will receive 16 per cent of the amount applied for. It was not to be supposed that even the introduction ot so small a loan as £20,000 for New Zealand could pass by unnoticed by those who look upon the colony as almost bankrupt, and no surprise has been expressed that two or three letters should have appeared in the "Times" on the subject. One correspondent, signing himielf '' Banker," has stated that "the colonists are themselves surprised at tho facility with which they have obtained loans in this Country, and frankly admit, when pressed on the subject, that there is no probability of the loans being repaid when due, and an extreme likell'iood of a failure to pay interest on them. The past recent prosperity was fictitious, occasioned by the lavish expenditure of the borrowed money, and there is now impending a considerable exodus to the Australian colonies, of those uuable to obtain employment." The same Correspondent further asserts " that the people who get these loans authorised are not men who intend making the colony their permanent home, but those who, having landed and other properties, become rich through the fictitious value put upon, these properties' by the expenditure—reckless and to a very great extent unproductive and unprincipled —of the loans." When such statements as these are made, the writer iv fairness should give hia own name. Who iis the " Banker " who asserts that " the colonists frankly admit that there is no probability of tho loans being repaid when due?" A man who writes thus, and who has not the courage to make himself known, must be put down as a coward, and his anonymous communication deserves the contempt it has received. Written before the tenders tfere opened, it was evidently penned for the purpose of discouraging those capitalists yrho were anxious to help forward tho;little town ol Invercargill. That his words were without effect shows what weight investors on this side attach to anonymous communications. The " Times " maintains that no local body ought to be allowed to raise money in England, but if this were so onr colonies would be badly off indeed. . , ;