The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. FRIDAY, AUGUST 16, 1895.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 195, 16 August 1895, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 16, 1895.

For tiie cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the fatura in tha dlatanca. And the good that we oan do.

The debate on the Financial Statement, which has ran a more or less monotonous course through the past week, shows how impossible it is to secure agreement on fiscal matters even within the Yanks of the two great political parties. Wherever the question of Protection v. Tree Trade crops up, a new line of cleavage is developed which severs parties that are united on many other political issues. This has been very conspicuous in New South Wales, where seme of the labour members hold single tax views involving the abolition of Customs duties, while others ate strong Protectionists. In New Zealand the divisions within parties are not less marked. On the Government side, for example, we have Mr Smith, of Christchurch, deploring the magnitude of the public debt and deprecating borrowing, and Mr Pinkerton, of Dunedin, stating emphatically that the colony must go on borrowing ; Mr Russell, of Riccarton, urging that a big loan should be raised to settle the unemployed difficulty, and Mr Buick strongly opposing that course, and declaring that people must be taught to look less to the Government, for employment and for aid in their various enterprises. Mr O'Regan believes in the Advances to Settlers Act, but not in the Lands for Settlement Act —and so on. Nor is it alone in the Government ranks that such differences prevail. While members of the Opposition assail the Government mainly on the ground of their alleged borrowing proclivities, Dr. Newman thunders at them for not going in for a big scheme of railway construction, which would involve a monster public works loan,

When it comes to the tariff, the differences are even more pronounced. Even the duty on flannelettes, which has excited such a chorus of dissent, and which the Government has already struck out of the list, is not without champions. The members of the Tariff Commission who proposed it are of course on its side, and Major Steward promises, when the tariff gets into Committee, to show how much can be urged in its favour.

It is not perhaps surprising that Captain Russell, the Leader of theOppo. sition,shouid havemistaken this conflict of opinion as affording an excellent opportunity for preparing an assault on the Ministerial stronghold, but he soon discovered that a free expression of views of this kind, which the Government had encouraged, was a very different thing from serious political disaffection.' It only required his notice of motion and the Premier's prompt acceptance of it as a challenge to harden up the ranks of the Government party: If such a motion as Captain Russell's, for the entire rejection of the tanft proposals, were to be moved at al), clearly it ought to be moved at once, and the retreat which the Opposition made on Wednesday > night was most ignominious.

We have no doubt that the discussion that has taken place, assisted by the many suggestions which have reached the Colonial Treasurer from VeLrious quarters, will assist him in' adjusting the tariff to suit the existing industrial conditions. In allowing amendments to be made upon the details of the tariff, Mr Ward, as we have before pointed out, is only following the ordinary course. It is, in fact, impossible to tell how new duties will bear upon various trades affected until the actual publication of the proposals draws forth the required information.

The work of the Tariff Commission was to collect such information, but it seems to have been very inadequately done, and there is no surrender of policy in making use of such further information as the recent discussion has elicited when finally revising the tariff before it finds its way into the Statute Books of the colony.