GOVERNMENT LOANS FOR SETTLERS.

Clutha Leader, Volume XX, Issue 1028, 6 April 1894, Page 6

GOVERNMENT LOANS FOR SETTLERS.

*e> Mr Thomas Murray of Glenmurray, Auckland, late of Glenore, has written the following letter to the Colonial Treasurer on the above subject : — ' Hon J. G. Ward, ' Dear and Hon. Sir, — Permit me to congratulate you aud wish you every success in your wise endeavour to introduce cheap money into this country. I sincerely wish the Government may be enabled to take the bull by the horns, and overcome all opposition. The task is great, but success will be the more honourable. There is nothing which would more tend to the good of the country. It is not borrow ing more money but helping the country to pay off what has been borrowed, and the country's necessity is the usurer's opportunity, but greed and selfishness must give way to th« necessities of the country. Truth and righteousness must prevail. There cannot be a doubt the high rate of interest, and fche low price of produce, are a great cause of stagnation, and are handicapping enterprise and industry, limiting our exports and imports, blocking up every chanuel of industry and source of employment for labour, ancl will do it so long as it is found more profitable and safer to lend out money, than to apply it to industrial pursuits. We see trade and agriculture languishing, men swagging the country, and public and private estates unsaleable, and depreciated in value quite 25 per cent, while we can no longer raise revenue on perishable goods sent into the country as the price of our loans, which in the place of benefitting the farmers has caused the land to fall in value and lowered the security as the debt increased, and another straw may break the camel's back. But it is clear a man may pay 5 per cent and prosper, who with a crushing 8 or 6 would go to the wall, or havg no limit to live upon and pay interest and less to employ labour and improve his or the mortgagee's land. Remove the crushing burden and our fine country will rise at at a bound and the people will be enabled to meet low prices and the competition of the world. 'We need, and we want, and we cannot possibly receive any protection. The very word brings a reproach upon our race. Our interest lies in a fair field and no favour, and not certainly I in bolstering up goods to a fictitious !

value to suit the greed and repacity of a few at the expense of the many, and at the expense of justice and prosperity. ' It should he our ambition, as it is our interest, to supply the vranta of the world rather than run in its face and oppose jt, and jeopardise our valuable export trade by adverse tariffs and reprisals. ' Our strength lies in our fine soil and climate j let us improve our situation and home industries will come with population ; in the 'meantime let us husband our great advantages, and develope our export trade, which will I enable us to open up the country and i employ all surplus labor. All other modes by which our wealth can b* increased must sink into insignificance before that which extracts wealth from, or causes it to spring from the soil the inalienable and indefeasible property of the people. To burden the soil, the raw material of our industries, to find work for the drunken, the idle, the thriftless, and the worthless, at the expense of the frugal, the diligent, and the well-doing, as a rule, can only lead and tend to a general levelling down, and to the destruction of enterprise and industry. Rather hold out every inducement for men to rough it on the land than scare them from it by uncertain possession or the fear of ruinous taxation, for there are no other mpans whereby our prosperity can be so well secured ; so let flocks increase and corn and wine abound, and let every man sit under his own vine and fig-tree, and let poverty come out of the land. The country cannot carry the overgrown towns on its back and prosper. Tt is in no way beholden to the towns, the price of products being dependent upon and determined by our export trade and the^ outside markets of the world who consume the produce, so let the idle in the 'towns settle on the land and learn to work, ancl not to envy and grieve at the good of their neighbors and talk nonsense about unearned increment, and contribute, nothing to the prosperity of the country. ' There can be no doubt the system of currency prevails m the world is the cause of much evil, and should be altered to meet the increasing demand for money, and the deficiency and ever-changing value of gold, making it unsuitable as a medium' of exchange or standard of value ; we want and must have a currency which will expand as commerce and wealth expand, and which will not, like gold, owing to its scarcity, be appreciated 2| per cent, yearly. The .products of the earth and labor being depreciated in like degree, men cannot wait until the produce of the, earth or. of labor is realised or exchanged for gold. So until we have a better representative of riches men must be doomed to starve in the midst of plenty, on account of the embargo laid upon labor and the gifts of the Creator, making the rich richer and the poor poorer, and men are not even allowed to live by the sweat of their brows, but must fall down and worship the god Mammon, and bend the knee to the golden calf — an idol which neither feeds us nor clothes us but crushes us remorselessly under foot. That gold is a pretty metal is quite inconfcesfcible, But for clothing its not warm and its for food indigestible. The first golden calf has now grown a bull, Bufc when will the cup of men's folliea be full ? " This, however, is beyond the scope of colonial politics. ' I have often wished that the mantle of Mr Macandrew or Mr Ballance might fall on some young New Zealander, who would lead us into the land flowing with milk and honey. 1 hope and trust thou art the man. — I am, &c, Thos. Murray.'