OUR ENGLISH CRITICS.

Bush Advocate, Volume IX, Issue 811, 29 July 1893, Page 5

OUR ENGLISH CRITICS.

All sorts of critics are offering in the English press all sorts of explanations of our banking troubles, but the most amusing, ingenious and suggestive are perhaps those supplied to the "Pall Mall Gazette" by the Hon. Harold FinchHatton. Mr Finch- Hatton is the author of a work entitled "Advance Australia," ana ho really knows something about us. since he spent some years in Queensland. Mr Finch-flatton puts first amongst the causes leading to the crisis the action of the banks themselves in "lending money without discretion upon insufficient margin ;" but next in point of mischief to the Australian banks Mr Finch-Hatton ranks the English press. English journal?, he says, have persistently played the part of wreckers as far as Australian interests are concerned. " The S3ries of articles published in the leading English daily papers," MrFinch-Hattonsays, "are onlyconeistent with the supposition that it was the object of the writers to engineer a panic. They have attacked the credit of institutions which, so far, had remained solvent ; and, worse still, promulgated vague and alarming insinuations affecting the credit of all surviving banks generally." Mr Finch-Hatton's other criticisms are of entertaining vigor and incisiveneas. Mr Patterson's bank holiday, for example, is declared to be " about as sensible a proceeding, under the circumstances, as sitting on the safety-valve of a steamengine." The legislation of the colonies has been poisoDed, Mr Finch-Hatton says, by disguised attacks on property in the interests of the working classes ; and this wickedness, curiously enough, takes its most malignant form in New South Wales ! Here is the manner in which Mr Finch-Hatton "sits on" New South Wales :— The plague-spot in the Australian atuncial and social system is New South Wales, where the legislation against the pastoral interest has been, and still continues to be, a violation of the crudest form of justice. The Acts of 1884 and 1889 were retrospective in form and infamous in character, breaking the squatters' lease, confiscating their property, depriving them of all tenant right in improvements and raising their rents in the western districts from 1600 to 2000 per cent. The squatters represent the principal source of the wealth of the colony. They are ruined, and all confidence being destroyed in the Government, no one will be found to take their places. I maintain that for sheer robbery and injustice it stands unparalleled in history. Tno net result of it is that the pastoral industry of New South Wales has been brought to the brink of destruction, if, indeed, it is not wholly destroyed. Mr Finch-Hatton's criticisms on our condition abound in phrases of epigram matic smartness. Thus, hu says, that not a few of the suspended banks "committed suicide to save their own lives. Th.it is to say, they have merely shut down upon their deposits to prevent withdrawal." The Legislative Council of New South Wales, he declares, "consists to a great extent of octogenarian imbeciles, who neither care for business nor are capable of understanding it if they did." Mr Finch-Hatton, it is gratifying to learn, is " very hopeful of the future of the other colonies, especially Victoria and Queensland, and i think that in the end they may be none the worse for this temporary set-back ;" but as for New South Wales, Mr Finch-Hatton sums up his estimate of her outlook in the words— "Very gloomy. No country," we are assured, " can long remain solvent under such infamous legislation. Capital will fly from the country- — indeea, it is doing so now. In a few years, unless her legislative policy is reversed, New South Wales will be bankrupt."