Evening Post. MONDAY, MAY 10, 1897. THE YEARLY ACCOUNTS.

Evening Post, Volume LIII, Issue 109, 10 May 1897, Page 4

Evening Post. MONDAY, MAY 10, 1897. THE YEARLY ACCOUNTS.

♦ We dealt with the accounts of the year when the Colonial Treasurer laid his memorandum on the table of the House. The accounts, duly audited, are now gazetted, and they differ in some respects from the estimate made by the Treasurer in his Memorandum. The ordinary revenue was estimated at £4,448,200. It was actually £4,452,845, or £4645 more. There was a small increase in Customs of £472 ; the Stamps were a few pounds less ; the Land and Income Tax, £3o9 more; Beer duty, a few pounds less ; Railways, £1139 more ; Registration fees, £1256 more ; Marine, £500 more ; and Miscellaneous, £1842 more. The land revenue was about £2500 less. These are all the alterations on the revenue side of the Consolidated Revenue .Account. The difference between the estimate and the actual result was only in the total of the revenue £2099. ' As for the expenditure, the differences were the following : — The Permanent Appropriations were £3673 less; the Departmental expenditure was £7947 less. Adding the increase of revenue with the less expenditure, the balance shown in the Treasurer's memorandum is increased by £13,615. We have omitted shillings, &c. — the actual amount 19 £13,628. We may contrast some of the results of the year. The land revenue has fallen by £18,719. The fall is in all classes— in the cash sales and the deferred payments, but the rents show, however, only a very slight decrease, viz. — £1669 10s 7d. This proves that notwithstanding the large increase in the areas taken up under the lease in perpetuity system and other leasing systems, the rents have not increased. The fall last year in the land revenue was £24,493, the decrease in the rents being alone £19,597. How is this ? There can only be, apparently, two explanations— one a lowering of the run. rents, and the other that the Crown lessees are not paying their rents or that they are abandoning their holdings. The position seems one that requires the serious attention of the Minister. The Land Tax shows a very slight increase—only about £1000. This shows that, notwithstanding fresh settlement, values of land are not keeping up— a good sign, for land prices have been long inflated. The Income Tax has, however, increased by nearly £13,000. This is highly satisfactory. The railways show an increase of revenue of £100,000, and an increase of expenditure of £35,000 — we give the round numbers — a gain to the colony of £65,000. More beer has been consumed ; the duty is £6000 more, which, at 3d per gallon, represents an increased consumption of 480,000 gallons, and yet it is said temperance is increasing with giant strides:. The Customs are up, having increased by the large sum of £169,662. The Tariff of 1895, that was not to increase taxation, has, as we predicted, largety increased the burdens of the people. The other items on the revenue side of the account call for no comment. £70,300 of Sinking Funds has been taken into revenue' and thus the credit balance was helped. Regarding the expenditure side of the account, two things should be noted. Our tale of interest is rising. It' is £25,694 more this year than last f The Departmental expenditure shows an increase of £114,246. We venture to say that this increased expenditure is alarming, and had not a very heavy tariff been put on in 1895 a debit balance would soon be staring us in the face. We cannot deal with the details of expenditure, as the accounts only show the gross amounts to each department. What this once called uon - borrowing Ministry has done in increasing our Public Debt is of some interest. We have borrowed the following sums : — Public Works £375,000 Lauds Improvement ... 208,700 Native Lands 218,300 Land for Settlements. . . 297,300 Loans to Local Bodies 93,800 In all £1,193,100. There is also a small increase of our debt for conversions. AYe have converted some debts, and had to pay premiums for so doing. One small part of the New Zealand loan of 1863, due in 1914, we converted at 11 per cent." premium. Then we have inscribed more Consols. The Public Debt table gives the net debt at £43,552,571. This is an increase of £1,280,682 over last year. And so our bondage to the foreign absentee capitalist is made surer by a Ministry that came into office on the pledge of self-reliance and against all foreign borrowing. There are some differences in the accounts that we may point out. For example, in the Railway Departmental account, p. 992 of the Gazette, the revenue is stated at £1,286,158. On page 994 of the same Gazette, in the Treasury accounts the amount is £1,287,139. How is this? On the same pages the expenditure is given as £789,054 and £776,747 respectively. We suppose that, perhaps, some expenses have not been entered in the Treasury; but how does the Treasury show more revenue than the Department? The difference of the expenditure is a large item— £l2,3o7. It is surely curious book- 1 keeping that shows such a difference between the Department and the Treasury. There are other figures in the Gazette which seem to show that our colonial book-keeping is peculiar. On page 949, the Customs Revenue collected for the quarter ending 31st March is stated by the Customs Department as £489,621, but on page 1012 it is said by the Treasury to be £513,094. How is this ? A difference of £23,473 is surely extraordinary. We shall), however, deal with the last quarter's returns on another occasion. THE COMING " JAP." _ 4 We have "from time to time brought to our readers' notice the menace offered to the development of these colonies, on AngloAustralasian, lines, by the phenomenal growth of Japan. Americans, too, are beginning to feel the approach of the coming danger, but, with the usual Yankee

shrewdness, have already begun to take measures for guarding against it. A short while ago the National Association of Manufacturers of the United States sent Mr. Robert P. Porter to Japan to enquire into the industrial and commercial condition of that country, and his report, entitled "Commerce and Industries of Japan," has just been published at Philadelphia. Mr. Porter spent about three months in visiting the chief silk and tea districts, the cotton-spinning centres, the copper mines at Ashis, and the seats of many minor industries. By his work in analysing and arranging the last Census returns in the States, Mr. Porter proved himself eminently capable of a lucid and accurate manipulation of facts and statistics, and his account of Japan is, therefore, especially valuable. The American representative was particularly struck by the general interest r taken in commercial questions. " Emperor and Prime Minister, the Cabinet, members of the Imperial Diet, and minor officials, all are imbued with the progress and future greatness of Japan in manufactures, in commerce, and as the dominating nation of this part of the world. At public dinners on official occasions of 'all sorts, the drift of the remarks is what can be done to help the material progress of Japan. The vernacular papers have taken this up, and enterprises of all sorts are exploited with the Vim and vigour displayed in the building of our own country." Mr. Porter gives figures to illustrate the enormous progress Japan has made since the war with China, and prophesies that before the end of the century she will export ten millions' worth of cotton goods alone to China and Corea. He concludes his chapter on this subject with the significant words— " For my part, I believe the cotton industry of the Far East is a subject England may well investigate to advantage. Great changes will take place in the next 25 years." The report points out, however, that there are two limitations — one removable alld the other permanent — which act as checks upon Japan's industrial future. The first is the lack of mechanical means of transport, and the consequent number (about 1,250,000 men) of the labouring classes necessarily engaged in the carrying trade. The more serious permanent drawback is the lack of iron, and the scantiness of mineral products, with the exception of coal and copper. In spite of these limitations, however, Japan is advancing by leaps and bounds, and threatens soon to become the leading power in these Eastern seas. This 'very valuable official document goes far to show that the refusal of these colonies to accept the Rosebery treaty with Japan will ere long prove to the Old Country a blessing in disguise, and that when Australia is federated Britain may be very glad to accept from the colonies the benefits of a differential tariff 'by the Federation against the cotton goods of the coming yellow man of the Far East. And since Japan has lately proved herself a naval Power of the first-class, it looks as though Britain's commercial interests may be best served by giving Russia a frea hand to keep the Japs in check.

Sir Robert Stout is generally at home when he gets amongst a large company of figures— when he gets amongst the numerous figures of our drink bill, as the other evening at the Choral Hall, hb is quite at home. Our drink bill is a big bill.- So is the drink bill of England, or of the United States, or, of Scotland, or Ireland, or Australia. Ours is no bigger a bill proportionately than the drink bills, of any country named ; it is smaller than some of them — much smaller, for example, than the drink bill of Sir Robert's own country. In Ireland, the whisky bill is perhaps even larger than that of Scotland. But the poor Irish people have a lot of care and poverty and trouble to drown — and there is some excuse for them. In trying to imagine they are not so unhappy, they tot up a big drink bill annually. The people of New Zealand, or England, are not unhappy. They score up a big drink bill probably because they are prosperous— and the fact seems to be that people will persist in running up big drink bills, no matter where they are, or what their circumstances may be^ There is no doubt that all the drink bills, or nearly all of them, are a great deal too big. There is but one effectual way of decreasing them — namely, by regulating the drink traffic, by passing tolerably stringent Alcoholic Liquor Bills, and by Seeing that these are strictly enforced: We have done a good deal in the way of temperance reform in our Acts relating to the sale of liquor. It is well known that legislation is evaded every day in the week, and our laws are not carried out as they should be. This, also, is a difficulty not at all confined to New Zealand. The same trouble exists in many Christian lands, and it Would seem that so simple a 'thing as the compulsory observance 1 of the law with regard to the sale of liquor cannot be attained anywhere. If Sir Robert Stout and his temperance friends would devote themselves to a crusade in the direction of enforcing our liquor laws, and insisting that they should be observed, there would probably be a large, steady, and constant decrease in our drink bill. It ought not to be a superhuman thing to enforce the provisions of an Act which, although perhaps more stringent than any other Australpiau Liquor Act, is nevertheless just in', its dealings with the liquor seller, and not at all harsh on any respectable gentleman in the liquor trade. We would impress on all temperance reformers two axioms which they should always remember; (1) nations cannot be made sober by Act of Parliament; and, (2) drunkenness can be very greatly diminished, if not altogether abolished, by Act of Parliament. And although these axioms seem to be contradictory they really are not so — and even if they were they would both be true, all the same. The tension between Downing-street and Pretoria has been greater than most people imagine, and the cable news of to-day is both important and re-assuring. The Vol ksraadlias at last repealed the objectionable Alien Immigration Law, which proved such a thorn in the side to the States and colonies bordering on the South African Republic. Mr. Chamberlain has already declared that the latest move of " Oom Paul's " Government tends to clear the atmosphere, and the Times correspondent reports a growing opinion on the Rand that the Transvaal will never actively insist on anything Britain claims to be contrary to the Convention of 1884. "Oom Paul," probably instigated by the War Party, has been credited with doing his best to embitter racial feeling among the inhabitants of South Africa, but even he can appreciate the logic of events, and he realises that the new element, the English and industrial, in the Transvaal is as powerful as the old reactionary party reI presented by the agricultural Boers, if indeed it is not more powerful. The mining interest favours the influx of the so-called aliens, while the antiquated pastoralists look upon them with suspicion and aversion. The i revenues of Mr. Kruger'a Government de-

pend upon the industrialists rather than the agriculturalists, and he has thought it well to bow to the storm and carry a measure which will please the adjacent States, and at the same time conciliate a by no means unimportant section of his own people. The Imperial and Republican Governments have for some months been "going one better" than one another in the game of military bluff, and jt is pleasing to see a sign of better relations coming from the hitherto stubborn and inflexible Volksraad. Prince Henry of Orleans seems determined that the world shall not forget the existence of a Bourbon pretender to the French crown. He has thrown aside the traditions of his house, and is advertising himself with the irrepressible Persistency of a Yankee showman. His latest venture is an article in the Paris Figaro on the English in. Egypt. Forgetful of the hospitality England has alwaj's extended to his exiled family, he now seeks to play upon his countrymen's, or rather a section of his countrymen's, antipathy to "perfide Albion." He taxes the English with breach of faith, the wholesale spoliation of Egypt, and a general disregard of all rights but their own, and this just at the time when the two nations are gradually drawing together in their common dislike of princely autocracy. Even Democrats can respect the stately reserve and dignified acquiescence in obscurity which characterised the late Comte de Chambord, but what must they think of the present representative of St. Louis, who combines the pretensions of Legitimacy with the tactics of an unscrupulous political wire-puller P The rebuke administered to His Royal Highness by The Times is neither undeserved nor illtimed :— " It is characteristic that the time Prince Henry has chosen for this attack on England is a moment when our relations with the Government of the Republic are particularly friendly. Nothing can have been in better taste than the attitude an< the language Which for many months pas the plain citizens who have been raiseo under the present Constitution to direct tht fortunes of France have habitually employed towards the great sister Power of Western Europe. The scion of the Bourbons might learn from them the lesson that noblesse* oblige, whether the nobility in question be that of birth or that of rank and responsibility."