WHAT SHOULD BE DONE WITH NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2602, 7 May 1869, Page 3

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE WITH NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE.

TO THIS EDITOR OP ME LYTTELTON TIMES. Sir, — New Zealand has much to contend with at the present time. Other colonies are suffering similarly to qurselves from want of money; other colonies find their trade dull and their industry poorly recompensed. We have, in addition to poor prices for our produce and dull trade, a ruinous war, which, it seems, we are bound ip prosecute. We have, in addition to a ruinous war, enormous private and public debts, the interest of which must be paid. Put those things before us—interest for debt, wai expenses, and miserable prices, and we may feel perhaps, not actually despair, but much disheartened with our condition. War is a curse; so also, as a rule, is borrowed capital. We in Canterbury have to pay to creditois outside the province interest upon the enorqous sum of £1.700,000. Can that interest go from us annually and leave the smallest aton of resiliency ? Can we go on long paying this heavy interest, and incurring at the same time costly war expenditure ? I am ifraid not. The undoubted remedy for tae war expenditure is the separation of the two islands. The remedy to enable us to feel lightly the interest expenditure is an alteration in the currency and banking laws. I will not discuss the almost accepted separation question, except so far as it presents the same difficulty as the alteration of thecurrency. That difficulty, common to both, is contained in the assertion that the Imperial Government will neither allow the separation of the two islands nor will it listen to any proposition to alter the currency. If this is a difficulty, let us face it. Great Britam cannot now, with any justice, take the same peremptory tone which has characterised hitherto its refusal to sanction the wishes of the colonists. For this reason Great Britain has entirely altered its policy towards the colonies. The home Government now says with exactitude and decision, “ for all matters belonging to your internal defence and internal development, the British tax-payer shall not pay one penny either in money or arms.” We have only now realised this as a fact. It would ill become us, however, to sit- down under this dictum as under an extinguisher. It may be, it ought to be made an opening for more hearty work. The British taxpayers may say this thing very properly through their legislature. "We can "hardly gainsay its justice ; we ought, however, to give this new policy its position as one affecting our interests in a very serious manner. When the British legislature enunciates in theory and carries into stern practice this idea, “ In future, in all matters relating to internal defence or internal development this, the Imperial Government, will practice non-interference either in money or arms,” then I say that the colonial legislature may reply with perfect propriety, “If you are determined to practice noninterference for our benefit,then it is fair that you also practice non-interference to our injury.” If we are to have non-interference in the internal affairs which may injure you, then the same policy ought to be extended to the interna! affairs which injure us. This, I conceive, to be the proper business manner in which the colony should meet the new policy of Great Britain. Let us say at once, we aseept the position, bnt we desire the policy of non-interference on your part to be complete. We simply desire that the policy of Great Britain towards the dominion of Canada be extended to us If that policy were so the law prohibiting otux interference -with the currency would be removed. That prohibition I believe to be, not only an injury to us, but a decided injury to Great Britain itself. That it is an injury to us may almost be shewn in this manner. If it is a fact, as I suppose it to, be, that we make our laws for our own safety and our own profit, we may safely infer that other countries make their laws for their own safety and their own profit. Now it cannot be said that Great Britain is an exception to this rule, so that it is perfectly possible, or rather extremely probable, that the laws made by Great Britain, especially those made for us to obey, may not comport with our safety, at least with our profit. The soundness of the argument is confirmed by the reason assigned for the prohibition—the safety of the British merchant or creditor. Alivays bearing in mind in the argument, the new policy of non-interference, or rather the throwing off the continuance of Imperial benefits to colonies, the question naturally arises, why should there be a continuance of Imperial restrictions or injuries? Why should the British merchant, in the recently, assumed .position of England, be protected by legislation ? To my mind it is a remnant of that interference with the natural laws of commerce which has always proved injurious. The British merchant in his dealings with every nation in the w irld does not require protection in matters of currency, whether the currency of the nation he trades with be sound, as that of England, or rotten, as that of Turkey. Trade itself regulates the exchange, Why then, if the British merchant can so trade with every sound or unsound independent state should he require protection in his trade with thq colonies, and why should the colonies, for the merchant’s sake, be bound to trade solely with English coin? If the restriction were removed, and we conducted our affairs imprudently, then the British merchant would stand off, and compel us by this natural law of trade to right ourselves. Even if he still traded, he would demand his own at least, even if a thousand pounds of New Zealand currency were required to pay a hundred pounds English. Any restriction upon trade I believe to be injurious ; hut this restriction is doubly baneful, because it practically throws the mono-, poly of money and banking into the hands of foreign companies, and (think all must admit that pay monopoly, possessed by any company whatever, must be excessively hurtful. In times gone by, Great Britain ( absorbed to herself the entire trade with her' colonics; she subsequently retained only the carrying trade ; both have passed away,and • there remains the obnoxious restriction upon our currency. To estimate* fully the evil: effects of tills prohibition, we ought to bear in mind that we really do carry on most of the functions of an independent State. We; prosecute war, we raise takes,we levy troops, we declare peace ; yet we are denied the means by which independent States accom-; pil«h those things. In ordinary times, gold and silver are the proper articles for a currency ; but when nations find themselves face to face with an overwhelming difficulty, thep set aside those valuable items of the currency, and use inconvertible paper, the ultimate payment of which the Government guarantees. I am about, for (be third time,

to advocate an alteration in our currency. 1 advocate the establishment of a Government Bank, with a basis of inconvertible paper, lam quite aware that even now,amid our great distress, many will pooh-pooh the idea as visionary. I know that men will say that the danger of over-issue is too great. That the o.vils of inflated prices will be too disastrous. Against all such arguments I place this one fact, and I ask men to think of it. Every country when in the face of great difficulties has adopted inconvertible paper. Great Britain began her great Bank of England with £1,200,000 of inconvertible paper, when William needed money for his continental war. That £1,200,000 has swelled up, so that the inconvertible issue of the Bank of England stands at this moment at fifteen million pounds sterling. Erom 1797 to 1819 every penny issued by the Bank of England was inconvertible, and England carried, under its auspices, her great war to a successful issue, liven at the present, say upon an average of every ten years, when speculation has reached such a height as to threaten almost national bankruptcy, Government steps in to avert the danger, and empowers the Bank to issue millions of notes without a penny of gold being deposited as security. We have seen the action of the United States in its civil war. But prior to that war, the paper issue of a large proportion of the States was practically inconvertible. We know that the first action of Canada in its independence was an issue of three millions of paper. We had the evidence of the Dutch Colonial Secretary, Mr Van Delden, to shew how inconvertible paper had completely restored the prosperity of Batavia. Many other examples might be adduced to prove the truth of the assertion that nations in the presence of great difficulties invariably fall back upon a paper issue. Usually, the difficulty has been grave, but temporary, yet, and the result is worth attention, the remedy has always answered its purpose. Now the position in which we are placed is one to us as serious as any which compelled the old countries to resort to inconvertible paper. Money we must have, because money alone will help us. Gold we have not got, credit is exhausted, the Imperial Government has cast us off, and will assist neither by guarantee, money, nor arms. Let us then make our own money, as nations have done before us. We cannot make our notes convertible into gold, but we can make then convertible into land by free and immediate selection. We can make them convertible into New Zealand debentures bearing interest, and Government can take them in payment for taxes. With such means of conversion, the value of paper could never fall below gold. War, and an empty exchequer, have usually compelled nations to use paper. We have both to a most unsatisfactory extent. But to my mind, if we were to place war out of the question, the work of a colony would amply justify the use of a paper currency.

We have one great permanent difficulty; one more than equal to any difficulty which old states have to encounter. We have to conquer wild wastes, and convert them into cultivated lands. We have to make every item that goes to form a nation. Roads, culverts, bridges, harbours, villages, cities, population, everything thatacivilised community requires we have to build up, and yet we are insane enough to suppose that we can do all those things by borrowed money with its heavy interest. It is perfectly natural for the governments of old countries to prohibit us from using a currency different from their own. We must borrow, and it brings them interest. They must trade with us, and it keeps them safe and saves trouble. Political economists writing in their closets, denounce inconvertibility. They study the workings of a nation, not simply replete with monied wealth, but stored with the results of the possession of monied wealth for ages. They know nothing of young nations, with wealth in natural resources, but not a penny to bring them out. They know nothing of the “ waste lands of the Crown,” where never a spade nor a plough is seen. They cannot imagine that the young nations called colonies are like great gaunt hungry youths with immensely vigourous stomachs, and nothing to fill them, at least nothing in comparison with their capacity for healthy digestion. Hence their mistake. They speak with a full stomach, and offer their younger brethren the tit bits of the old epicure, even when the hungry eye looks longingly on the big loaf. They give us dainty scraps of gold which lie heavy on us, when we would very much rather have less valuable stuff and plenty of it. Men say tbit paper will ruin us ! Has gold saved us ? Both may claim the power of effecting an equally disastrous result. Of the two, I will back the borrowed mill of gold to grind us down the longest and the surest. I will back gold for this reason : The British Government has peremptorily prohibited the use of any currency in the colonies but gold. What British colony (except it be gold-bearing) is prosperous ? Take Canada, the oldest, the nearest, full of natural resources, and peopled by men of energy. Why should that colony in comparison to its neighbouring independent State stand stUl. We have in the States a people ruling from the Atlantic to the pacific, including every degree of temperature, yet ruling all, vigourously and well, and we have in the Canadas a State with about as much power to influence the world as a boy that has just left his mother’s apron strings. Why should this be ? There must be some source of national life withheld. That which we require is complete freedom to regulate our own internal affairs. The action of the British Government in casting us off from Imperial assistance of any kind is a very decided step towards the accomplishment of that independence, and I am convinced that our first use of that freedom would be, like Canada, the free issue of paper, guaranteed by Government. The advanced politicians of England advocate a more complete separation of the colonies from the Empire. The advocacy of that policy can only arise from a conviction that both the mother and her offspring would gain by the process.

I again repeat that Great Britain, having thrown oft liability to contribute benefit or help to colonies, there ought to be a revision of our position, so that her sway should not, in the absence of benefit, contribute only restriction and injury. Your obedient servant, A. Christchurch, May 4, 1869.