The Dunstan Times. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1,1875.

Dunstan Times, Issue 702, 1 October 1875, Page 2

The Dunstan Times.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1,1875.

Beneath, the rule of men entirely just the pen is mightier than the sword.

No sooner has Muster Humphrey— MrThos. Fellowes—been extinguished than another Richmond takes his place in the field of New Zealand detractors in the person of Mr W. L. Rees, Barrister-at-Law, Auckland. This Mr Rees, after practicing his profession in Victoria, afterwards at Hokitika, then at the Thames, and lastly Auckland, besides doing a little business in the meantime as an itinerant Methodist preacher, seeks to acquire more lasting and imperishable honors by libelling the country which provides him with bread, and Sir Julius Vogel in particular. From what we can judge by the subject matter of a leading article, published in the Yorkshire Gazette of the 10th of July last, Mr Rees appears to have given his querulous ideas to the wmld in the shape of a fifty-))?ged pamphlet, which, if we are to judge by the article referred to, must have been pretty largely circulated in England, where it has doubtless attracted a considerable amount of attention, and that some weight must have been attached to its reasonings, or such a highly respectable and influential journal as the Yorkshire Gazette would not not have devoted so much of its apace to a review of its merits. This meretricious publication is entitled “The Coming Crisis, a Sketch of the Financial and Political Condition of New Zealand, with the Causes and Probable Results of that Condition." A rather imposing and high sounding signification, and which we have but little doubt assisted largely to delude

people into a belief of the genuineness of the specious arguments its nutho • seeks to establish as representing the present and future political life of New Zealand. But, lifting the veil of obscurity from (ho real intent which Mr Rees seeks to draw over his work, so i that he might, under the cover of pretended patriotism and a sacrifice of personal interests to the exigencies of the Colony, the more readily discharge his shafts of vituperative spleen and jealousy at Sir Julius Yogel and his Public Works Scheme, leaves Mr W. L Rees and his subtle designs unmasked before public opinion in New Zealand. Mr W. L. Rees is a violent partisan of Sir George Grey and the Provincial party of non-progressionists, and what is there that exists which they would not do to defame the reputation of Sir Julius - Vogel 1 Happily, however, they are not sufficiently strong to bring their schemes to a state of maturity, and are consequently compelled to rest content with the ignoble amusement of throwing mud, in the hopes that some at least will stick. Mr Bees seeks to explain that the people of New Zealand ai - e, to a great extent living in a “ Fool’s Paradise." imagining themselves wealthy and prosperous by the expenditure of large sums of borrowed money, when at the same time their position is one demanding serious consideration, at the same time pointing out the avenging Nemesis which must overtake the Colony when all this expenditure has ceased, in the shape of an insupportable weight of taxation, under widen the people must continue to groan for years ere it. can be lightened or removed, and the whole of the blame for this he attributes to Sir Julius Vogel. Everybody is fully aware, without Mr Rees informing them, that if they borrow money they must expect to have to repay it back again together with interest for the accommodation, and it is perfectly useless for anyone to argue that the people of New Zealand fail to recognise their situation. As a natural consequence while so many public works ai - e being proceeded with at one time, and paid for by borrowed money, a species of inflated prosperity must follow as one of the necessities of the position, and which may possibly appear spurious when compared with thinss in their previous abnormal condition. But. this is unavoidable, the great demand for all descriptions of labor cannot do otherwise than add largely' to the prosperity of everybody, and more especially those engaged within the direct influence of the expenditure of the money. Even distant places in the interior, though complaining of the loss of population, have contributed their quo'a to the busy workers for reasons that ;the making of x-ail-ways and Other .employments coexistent thereupon have proved more remunerative t<! the many than either gold mining or farming, consequently there followed a tempoiary abandonment of settled pursuits by an exodus to the seaboard; The railways completed, a react ion must of course follow, but not in the sense Mr Rees would have people believe, for this gentleman’s limits of observation appear to take effect little bevond the limits of his nasal organ. The labor thus set free need not seek fresh fields and pastures new, in some other country, nr lay down and starve; we have still the interior to fall back upon in the general resumption of old employments, which have remained almost in a state of abeyance ; and when assisted by the advantages of railway commit nication in the near or immediate vicinity, the workers will be enabled to resume their occupations again with increased profit to themselves, because the seaboard, which forms the basis of supply for the inteiior, is practically less removed than heretofore, consequently they will be enabled to procure whatever articles they require at a reduced cost; while, should they be in a position to export, many things which the absence of railway communication when' once the demands for local consumption have been supplied are comparatively valueless, will be sold at remunerative prices This, with the extra demand fur labor in the track of the country traversed by the railways, as, after all, the prosperity, spurious or real, as pointed out by Mr Rees, some portion of the earnings are sure to remain in the hands of the workers and others, and who will naturally expend them again in improving either the beauty, convenience, or productiveness of their properties, will leave little or no labor unemployed; besides, there will remain this advantage that the efforts of all parties can be more effectively employed. Mr Rees points significantly to the great indebtedness of the Colony, which, including money borrowed and money authorised to be borrowed, he estimates at twenty millions, an enormous amount for a population of three hundred thousand persons. Still, however large this sum may appear, the capabilities of the people to bear the burthen must be set against it, and in the case of New Zealand colonists their prosperity docs not appear likely to decline, they are therefore able to sustain a load impossible with another community. 'To an observant mind, like that of Julius Vogel’s, it must have, from the first, appeared very clear that unless some scheme for Public Works was inaugurated the progressive state of the Colony had well nigh reached the extiemity of its tether, and that unless something was done to assist its productive industry,

things had reached a stage of develop ment from which they could proceed no further; while, what was plainer still, that a country possessing so much vitality ns New Zealand not to be making headway was equivalent to a retrograde movement. Sir Julius Vogel even saw further than this, and that was, the abundance of money to be obtained from Europe merely for the asking, provided that there existed confidence that the security to be given was ample and sufficient, nnd he prp pounded his famous Public Works scheme, which, assisted by fortuitous circumstances, has so far proved an acknowledged and unqualified success. Of course, some of the money may not have been expended so. wisely as people could desire, but this has arisen from the misrepresentations of influential political bodies whom Sir Julius Vogel thought to bo honest in lieu of being selfish and corrupt; while, at the same time the clamorous demands of Provincial Governments, jealous of the possibility of not receiving their share of the public expenditure, exercised a most pernicious influence ; t iking tilings, however, upon the whole, mistakes have not been greater than what might have been the case in any other British community, while there remains to us this satisfaction that t leProvinceshavebeenabolidicd wh n there will ensue a oneness of action mutually beneficial to the Colony at large, replacing the irregular and partial advantages of the Provincial system and its corrupt administration. Mr Rees, Sir George Gray, and adherents represent all the abuses of Provincialism; they have fought a -hard fight to perpetuate th"ir hobby, but public opinion has most unmistakably shown that they are behind the requirements of the age, and “ charm they never so wisely,” refuses to listen. The facts are these. Sir Julius Vogel, by his Public Works policy, took the wind out of the sails of these would-be benefactors of New Zealand, and they are jealous of his success, and onlv find relief in seeking to injure him by qae u'ous public ilious directed to people at a distance, that they might the more effectually vilify the man whose example they should seek to emulate, or at least do their best to assist the development of the schemas winch he designed, and which, if properly earned out, must prove highly beneficial to the Colony. We will ask Mr Rees a question that lie indirectly asks of Mr Vogel, what did h° come to New Zealand for hut to better his condition in life, and which we suppose was the case witli all colonists, or they would not have found their way here 1 It would not do for all the world to be born with silver spoons in their mouths, or there would be an end of enterprise altogether ; it is the want of silver spoons which has driven men to seek their fortunes in the uttermost cud of the earth, and to whose energy and enterprise the Brit sh Colonies in- New;Zealaiul and Australia owe their greatness. Mr Rees, after indulging in a long tirade of abuse of public men in New Zealand, more so Sir Julius Vogel, proceeds to show by figures the financial degeneracy of the Colony, inasmuch as because our imports ore largely in excess of our exports be attributes to the result of prodigality, and can only lead on to bankruptcy, which must immediately ensue the moment the borrowed money becomes expended. This, however, is a most fallacious argument; the public loans were contracted purposely to import labor and material to be made vepro ductive another time. No person or persons can exp ct to have their cake and eat it tco, and our bans when expended will represent rial capital, in in the shape of that which will make capital. Money can produce nothing of itself, it is merely the representative of so much capital, which, unless it can be made reproductive, might ns well have no existence , at all; but, converted into railways with their necessary plants of rolling stock, water races to assist the miners in obtaining gold, while a cart iin proportion of the money earned as wages by the makers of the railways and afterwards expended by them in the purchase of agricultural implements and machinery, or other , mechanical appliances, becomes realcapltd, and will enable ns to call forth from out of the earth itself the wherewithal to discharge the liabilities that have been incurred, and this is just the object the far seeing originator of the Public Works scheme sought to obtain wh-n lie declared bis policy. In a newly settled country, during the period of its earlier development, or where, from causes like the finding of a goldfield there follows a great and sudden influx of population, its imports must necessarily be larger than its exports, and the more so when one of its indigenous products is gold. Money and material must flow in before anything cm flow out. A shopkeeper first stocks his premises before he seeks customers ; while a manufacturer must purchase his plant ere he proceeds to fashion his peculiar wares. A precisely similar course holds good with the work of colonization, before anything is exported something must be imported, and as the production of raw material is necessarily slow, requiring a series of years to become properly developed, the imports must during this stage he largely in excess of the exports. Even in the case of Mr Rees himself, we will charitably suppose that ere ho parted with so much valuable forensic loro, he must have previously occupied some few years of his lifetime in im-

porting into hid cranium the necessary amount of knowledge. C The Press Mr lines accuses with V crimes as plentiful as blackberries, and si with backslidings as “ thick as leaves S in Vullntnbrosa," while lie supplies E some rather extraordinary items of in- ° formation which no one in New Zea- I land over heard of before He in- v forms people that all the leading >' newspapers in the Colony are owned P by public companies, thn shareholders t being largely composed ot the Premier 1 and his friends, this section of the E Press presenting only that side of the 1 question which is pleasing to “ the r powers that be." Mr Hens proceeds 1 further and says, no intelligence ever r finds its way into the newspapers ex- f espt through private enterprise, which t .we hope he attributes to the country i journals as, with only some two or « three exceptions, none are owned by 1 companies. He also further declares that correspondents’ letters to the 1 London newspapers, as well as articles < are all supplied at lire instigation of i Sir Julius Vogel and Co. There may ! possibly be some measure of truth in ' that, inasmuch as some few of the 1 leading town newspapers are owned by 1 public companies, but nothing further, as for the mast part newspapers thus owned are almost invariably opposed 1 to Sir Julius Vogel, as well as to a 1 large number of his schemes and do- 1 ings. This charge therefore fal ! s to 1 the ground, white all the others are equally unfounded Mr Rees’s lucubrations only represent the qusrelous complaints of some disappointed but aspiring individual, whose abilities his fellow colonists hive failed to reognise, because having been tried in ‘he fire and found wanting; they therefore refine to accept him as a prophet, deeming his perorations little better than the emanations from what, in colonial phraseology is understood as “a wind bag." Mr W. L. Rees, in his relations to Sir Julius Vogel, reminds us of a passage in Roman history. where Marius, seven times Consul of th ' Empire, was, upon one occasion, through the caprice of fortune, thrown into prison, and while there in chains a slave was sent to kill him But the Consul smote the arbiter of his fate for the moment with his eye, by the mere blank supremacy of a great mind over a little one, and said, “ Dos’t thon, follow, presume to kill Cains Marius 1 Quailing under the voice, nor daring to offend the consular eye, the slave sunk abjectly to the ground, and upon his hands and knees crawled out of the prison, leaving Marius standing in solitude steadfast and immovable as the capital itself.