POLITICAL NOTES.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 486, 29 July 1890, Page 3

POLITICAL NOTES.

[STANDARD SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.] Wellington. Saturday. The Public Wcrks Statement has been received with very different expressions of opinion, the comments seeming to be inspired just according to what the local circumstances may be. I just send you opinions from two of the Wellington papers. The Evening Press this evening has a vigorous analysis of acme of the proposed items of expenditure, concluding with a hope that every item of the proposed expenditure will be resisted until the House is satisfied as to its utility and prefit to the colony. Appended is an extract, under the heading—- “ THE SQUANDER OF THE DREGS.” No one, even the most partial of admirers of the Ministry, can regard the Public Works Statement as any other than the most dreary of documents. We are invited to partake of the broken fragraments of a banquet that others have eaten, and to drain the lees of the decanters from which others have filled their flowing bowls. It is a melancholy ceremony and the tone of the Minister was appropriately funereal. He begins by begging us to estimate the importance of the subject at an inverse ratio to the insignificance of the fund to be dealt with, and ends by inviting us to be independent and parsimonious. The text at the beginning is calculated to make the audi-

ence humble, bat the conclusion of the sermon is as the rubbing of salt into a sore. There is semething incomparably ironical in the comparison between she Maori War and the black death or sweating sickness of poverty that has reduced the colony to such straits in the year 1890. The boasted ‘‘self reliant policy ” during the Maori War was made compulsory not because the people desired to be “self reliant,” but because England withdrew the troop.*, and it is not now our virtues which would make us abstain from loans, but the certainty that England would have refuted to grant them. Turning, however, to the subject matter of the may at least be grateful for the impdßed condition of the railway traffic,jßmsy be well satisfied that the a sound one. Nor are we the lees certaWthat the expenditure on the coal harbors, large as it is, is a wise one and that it may be in the not distant future justifiable to extend the accommodation. But our satisfaction ceases when we reach the railways Under construction and the proposals for new works. On a small scale those proposals have, in their worst form, all the most flagrant evils of the Public Works Policy. Only where formerly hundred? of thousands were distributed and squandered, it is now tens of thousands that are scattered in little useless dabs through the provinces. There is not a single attempt to justify the scattering of the money. Auckland, it is true, receives the reward that its members have so

treacherously played for. The whole of the four first items are presented as peace offerings to these virtuous and incorruptible misers who are dow wavering in Supply between their interests and their honesty. There is no justification for squandering a penny on any of these extensions, and the pretence of getting at a totara forest, by extending the North Trunk railway at the Auckland end, is so shallow and transparent that it is an impertinence to the House to offer it. A faoiuble opinion. The Times this morning approves of the effort Mr Fergus baa made to be just with the dwindling funds he has in his hands, but fears that he is wrong in his “ never ” as regards a future loan. The following ig the most interesting portion of the article Mr Fergus* Public Works Statement is clear, well drawn up, interesting, and comparatively brbf—altogether a businesslike document. Some of bis predecessors of the time of the Second Empire—the days of great spending policies—will look at Mr Fergus with the pitying eye one has for a man who is obliged to make bricks without straw. They might even be justified in feeling astonished that this one nevertheless does contrive to get his bricks made. What a contrast it is! In those days the House was on the tiptoe of expectation for many days, of hope and fear. The Public Works Statement Wag waited for with the eagerness of feverish expectation. When the proper time came the Minister read it with a calm voice, while the listening members broke out into profuse perspiration. The “ Hear, hears ” came in rapid crackle of independent file firing; the prelude it was to the battle which raged over the schedules. The public in its irreverent way called it a scramble. Now the statement is thrown on the table, members read it as a disagreeable duty, there is no sound of joy in the lobbies, no prepara tion for battle, no occasion even for gossip. Ten years ago we were spending two millions a year; last year we spent less than half a million. We faced the beginning of the fin in ci al period with a modest three quarters of a million in hand ; that money Mr Fergus tells us without any circumlocution must last us two years. We are tapering off. We had one kind of heroism in those brilliant days of the past. We have a different kind of heroism now. That was the heroism of inflation. This is the heroism which prospers under a phenomenal shrinkage. On the whole it is a good sign, and the Minister makes the most of it Of the expenditure proposals we are bound to say that the Minister makes the most of the remnant of the money. He carries on the railway lines ; the reading of the central country of this Island is the best policy we can have at present; on the line of the Northern Trunk, he husbands the resources of that work very prudently ; he does he can for the development of the coal measures, quite one of the most important of our duties; and the lighting of our coasts has not escaped his attention. PUBLIC WORKS, Under the heading of main roads in the estimates accompanying the Public Works the following appears:—Fcr Tauranga to Napier via Taupo. In miscellaneous, roads and bridges—Waiom a tat ini to Hick’s Bay, £3OO. In roads to open up lands before sale—Tologo to Mangatokerou, £200; Tologa to Arakihi, £250; Ormond to Waiapu, £100; Ormond to Opotiki, £l,lOO ; Makaretu, £100; Tautane reserve, £400; Manawatu bridge repairs, £500; purchase of roads to Oroua lands, £100; miscellaneous and engineering. £456; total, £3.260. In public buildings Hastings gets £6OO for a courthouse, and Danevirke £4OO. ▲ HARBOR BILL. It is believed the Napier Harbor Empowering Bill will be rejected. The Hawke’s Bay members are not unanimous on the subject, and the Wairoa people have requested Mr Arthur to oppose it. As Mr Ormond is the moving spirit in the Bill, you can guess what a delightful quandary your member will be in. Though there is no resemblance in the nature of the Bills, the fate of one will probably affect the other.