The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Saturday, October 6, 1888. THE THUNDERBOLT.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 205, 6 October 1888, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Saturday, October 6, 1888. THE THUNDERBOLT.

Be just and fear not; Let all the end, thou Aim’ll at bl thy oountry’i, Thy God's, and truth’!.

The report presented by the special shareholders' Committee of the Bank of New Zealand represents to us a truly deplorable state of affairs. It has come like a thunderbolt to many people, but we confess that it is scarcely a degree worse than we anticipated. At the same time we feel that the best course has been taken, to unflinchingly face the difficulty, make a clean breast of the position to the shareholders (who were previously quite as much in the dark as any outsider), and meet the future in a straightforward and aboveboard way. The interests of every colonist are in a measure wrapt up with the interests of this groat financial institution : therefore every one of us must feel deeply concerned in the outcome. There was a certain ordeal to go through, and though staved off even by the special committee itself, it had to come sooner or later, and we must say that it has at last been nobly faced. We have in<imes past vigorously protested against the colony being plunged into millions of debt one of the great’ objects for which being to enable a languishing financial institution to recover its former footing—a means, too, by which only the blind could be deluded. The colony has got too near the end of its borrowing tether to give any hope that further borrow ing will create a “ boom,” but when our leading politicians are So deeply interested in these matters there is no telling to what evils this fittdness

may not lead. Even the shareholders special committee endeavored to hold back the truth for a time, but past failings have been atoned for by an honest disclosure. It must have been humiliating to colonists to find that the bank has to act the meek suppliant in the English money market to enable the institution to regain its former sound footing; -still that is a more honest course than to continue deluding people.

This affair ought to add another lesson to the many bitter experiences which the colonials have undergone during the last few years. It proves the death-like grip by which these financial institutions hold the colony in their power. Certain servile prints are doing their best to gloss over the serious aspect of these disclosures in connection with the Bank of New Zealand. We are not at all surprised that our local contemporary should adopt this line, but we were never prepared for the extraordinary assertion that “ the shareholders are, in point of fact, the sole sufferers.” Then we are told that the only damaging charge which can reasonably be made against the directors is that they have been paying dividends not warranted by profits ; and further, “ there is no doubt that it would have been worse for the colony had the Bank resolved upon a clearing up course a few years ago.” Need we reply to such claptrap ? “ False pretences ” is an ugly phrase, but there are times yhen it is applicable to others besides the unfortunates who have to suffer for their misdeeds. “It is certain to come in for severe censure at Home,” and according to this luminary, the colonials will of course smile approvingly, and thank their stars that these disclosures were not made a few years previously. This is the abominable, break-neck policy that has cursed this colony for so many years, and which a blind and deluded people are gradually learning to recognise; by which one of the most beautiful and fertile countries on God’s earth has been deeply encumbered for perhaps centuries to come. Possibly those who have eventually to bear the burden may also discover the remedy: force of circumstances has compelled the Bank to find a remedy for its troubles, but unfortunately those of the colony are more deeply rooted, and the only remedy apparent is wise and sober administration in the present and future.

The Bank Has now decided on a course which should have been adopted years ago —in fact which never should have been needed. It is to the interest of every colonist that the Bank’s soundness should be unimpeachable; but those colonists should also remember what brought out the disclosures—it was the blunder (the most fortunate blunder perhaps that ever New Zealand-states-men made) in the Loan Act of 1887. It should prove to every colonist, too, that “things are not always as they seem.”—that we may be lulled into a sense of false security by those who ought to be our best guardians.