CORRESPONDENCE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 8, 9 July 1909, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE GOVERNMENT'S ANSWER. x'O THE EDITOR. Sir, — Mr. Millar ttated in answer to the deputation that waited on him -yesterday that the Government could not expend more money than was voted by the Finance Bill that was put on the statutebook last session. I may be forgetful, but do you not think it was the duty of our M.P.s' to have urged on the Government the necessity of making extraordinary allowance for the black winter that was. creeping on — even if had not already arrived at that time — to strike anguish into many a heart and despair into many a Foul? If Government could not lawfully have done this, was it not its duty to have kept sitting, so as to be ready to give what aid it could now the fell hour has arrived? Though a suppoiter of the Dreadnought offer, it makes one think hard when the same Government that granted that one million off hand, turns and says it cannot aid its starving thousands by the expenditure of. say, even another million, because the cJuntry cannot stand the strain ? If the country is that badly off, why have rushed to the Mother Cfountry with tho offer of a battleship till she was desperately in need of one? No, the Government can make a present of a million to the Motherland, ask the people to foot the bill, and then refuse them aid when things look black around them, and hungry mouths go unfed. If there was ever a need that required the assistance of Parliament, it is the present one of unemployment through out the whole of New Zealand. With such an outlook in front of him, it was the Premier's place, in my opinion, .to have left his Parliament silling, and not have prorogued it. — I am, etc., SYMPATHISER. 6th July.