The Daily Telegraph WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1882.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3537, 8 November 1882, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1882.

It is hardly to be supposed that the credit of New Zealand is altogether gone, but it is certainly an ominous fact that nothing has been heard of the loans the Governemt endeavored to raise in Melbourne and Sydney. If the New Zealand agents had been successful _ the Government would not have maintained silence. If the money was borrowed upon anything lifce reasonable terms there would have been a Ministerial flourish of trumpets loud enough to convince the most sceptical that none but Wbitaker-Atkinson and Co. could have performed such a stroke of finance. Not a sound, however, is heard. We presume Melbourne capitalists look shy at the stock of " Great Loan Land," and that the Sydney men have better use for their money than lending it to a colony that goes, as it were, into back-slum pawnshops rather than into the open London market. The fact is New Zealand is borrowing a great deal too much ; the debt of the colony is out of all proportion to her population and revenue, and the time haß come, apparently, when the truth of this is being brought home to us in the very disagreeable form of a refusal of further credit. It is all very fine to say that we are borrowing for re-productive-works, but though we may deceive ourselves into that belief we cannot deceive others. Our railways, no doubt, do pay as large a dividend as can be es pec ted on the capital expended on their' construction, but out of every loan more than half has been spent on other subjects. Sir George Whitmore, when the North Island Main Trunk Railway Loan Bill was before the Council, made tho following forcible statements : — The fault of our public works expenditure has been this: that we have only spent about fivepence or sixpence out of every .hilling ou railways, for which we have ostensibly raised the loans. The excuse has always been that we were raising the money for reproductive works; but a very large part of it has been spent in a manner which has not been productive at all. So it is even in this New Zealand Loan Bill. The proposal is that out of the whole three millions only £1,600,000 shall be spent on reproductive railways. I confess that I do not see that all these lines wnich are to be made are trunk railways. A paper/ extracted from the Government theotberl day proves that the trunk railways have\

paid, but that the branch lines have a great deal less than paid. When we in this place tried to prevent the Public Works Act coming into force until the people were prepared for it aud the country had been surveyed, and when we were beaten, then this profligate expenditure began, because it was then obvious that the people generally did not desire that the loans should be spent in the most economical way, but that the general feeling was what was expressed by ajthen member for Wellington City, and which I heard with horror applauded to the echo in another place, " We want plenty of money, and we want it soon." Well, Sir, they got it coon, and have made a pretty great mess in our spending of it. We were beaten down in our opposition to rushing on with railways before we had made any preparation for them, and then we made a stand against branch lines, and said that we should have only trunk railways. But what has been the result ? Why, we have had a large number of branch lines made, some of which pay two or three shillings less than nothing, and yet a very large proportion of tbe money now proposed to be raised is to be spent on these branch lines, which certainly never ought to be constructed in this way. I think it is monstrous that certain parts of the country should have to make their own railways while other parts of the country have duplicate lines and loop-lines in every possible direction. I oppose this Bill chiefly for that reason. The honorable gentleman has told us that there is a million and a half's worth of incomplete railways, which it will take three millions to complete; and therefore, as only £1,600,000 is proposed to be so applied, I say that this Bill means another Bill. We are entering upon another era of spending a million a year. Now, I have often been told that we were only to spend a million a year. . . It is nothing to me whether the Auckland line is made or not. I say that the proper system was that there should have been a trunk line through both Islands. Look at the absurd bits of railways we have now in both Islands, some of which do not pay for their coals; and now we are asked to extend them. I know, and the honorable gentleman knows, that the money borrowed will not be spent reproductively. I cannot conscientiously vote for the Bill, and I will put on record my protest against the continuance of this profligate policy. It is anything but what it professes to be. We have ten millions invested in railways, and we have spent twenty-three millions, thirteen of which has gone in other ways. Here we start off again in the -same direction of spending money on a number of small purposes which have nothing whatever to do with railways.