The Lyttelton Times. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 1884.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXI, Issue 7228, 30 April 1884, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 1884.

The Premier lias explained that he was reported at Hawera with a want of fullness that was misleading about the depression. His two speeches at Dunedin and Christchurch have told us what his real opinion is; and the text of his remarks at Hawera shows us that he held the same views at the outset of his late little political campaign. In these views it is a great pleasure for us to be able for once to cordially endorse much of what the Premier said upon the depression, all that he said upon the manner in which it behoves us to bear the depression, and a great deal that he said abo«it the Public Works expenditure under the system inaugurated in 1870. These subjects form the neutral ground of parties at the present time. They are not party questions, nor should they be allowed to become party questions for one moment. The Premier tried to occupy the neutral ground, so that it might become the vantage ground of the Government. Therein he really made party questions of these general common subjects, with the intention of making political capital out of them. To these tactics we took the first opportunity of objecting. But having denied Major Atkinson’s right to occupy the neutral ground, it only remains for us to agree, to the large extent we have mentioned, with his singularly irrelevant and very excellent remarks upon the depression and the Public Works expenditure. These very views have formed the burden of our articles, while their opposites were being put forth in. the columns of the Ministerial journals. We pointed out that these pessimist views were the direct result of the gloomy treatment accorded by the Colonial Treasurer to the financial and commercial situation four years ago. Major Atkinson, for political purposes, very greatly overdid the advocacy of the prudential course he then found himself compelled to adopt. For political purposes, he finds that he must do his utmost to undo the lamentable effects of that exaggeration of treatment. His is now, in fact, the bold policy of seeking to make capital out of the most grievous blunder of his political life. But the truth is the truth. Major Atkinson spoke the truth we have always been advocating about the depression and the Public Works expenditure. We advocate the truth still. Ministers and Premiers and Treasurers may come and go, but the truth remains always. On no occasion did the Premier speak better about the depression than during his passage of arms with the deputation on the railway question. His vigorous replies to Mr Stead are the only rays of light contributed by him to a display in which all the rest of the light was contributed by his adversaries. The grain rates are certainly an evil. They make a weight, which, because it is unexpected, has thrown out calculation. They are the direct outcome of the imperfect system of political management, which, being without the power of acting fairly by those who use the railways, is compelled to act unfairly. All this is patent. But it does not warrant anyone in talking of the amount of the rates as absolutely crushing, or prohibitory of grain grow-

ing. It does not warrant anyone in sustaining his 2 )ro^ B *'. a S a inst tho rrrain Tnfos Tiv & (lecflaration tlitii/ things STbo bad that the time has oorao to, as the Premier put it, with more force than elegance, “ clear out” of tho country. It does not warrant anyone in representing that tho general indebtedness is so had that an impost of half-a-crown an acre is sufficient to ruin tho whole landed interest of the Colony. To support protest against the grain rates in this way is to strike a blow at the public credit, commercial and financial, of New Zealand. It is also an endorsement of the taunt at the mercantile interest, in which tho Premier took refuge at tho public meeting on Saturday night, when ho asked whether it was not a fact that most mercantile men had greatly miscalculated tho prospects of their respective businesses for the last and current years. It was painful to read that Mr Stead had in all these ways overdone his protest against the grain rates. And it was satisfactory to observe that none of the members of the deputation endorsed his views, or came to his assistance, while the Premier was showing him, in his special manner, how to educate himself to more reasonable views.

We may be told, in reply, that our staples are so low in price that fears for the worst are just. Of the thre products of this part of the Colony meat is looking up, and has a future and wool has a history, the leading feature of which during a hundred years is fluctuation. The third, grain, is low, and without so much apparent recovering power as the other two. But we do not remember a period in the history of the New Zealand grain trade when it was not firmly held that the selling price of grain must be less than the cost of production. First it was the climate that was unfavourable, then the price of labour was the obstacle; distance from the sea hoard was pronounced prohibitory, and the ship had not been built that was able to carry Home a cargo of New Zealand wheat in fair condition. Every obstacle removed, the competition of the rest of the world was to send the Canterbury farmer into abysses of financial misery, as much, that is, as was left of him hy the nor’westers, the shipping companies, the horde of insurance agents, commission agents, brokers, warehouse owners, warehouse sweepers, to say nothingof the cormorants of the harvest field. Yet somehow tho Canterbury farmer has managed tb plod and plough his undaunted way into this present year of grace 1884. During his whole career on the London market there has been some special country exceptionally favoured hy nature and ait (the art of the abundantly talking croaker) for the production of cereals, waiting for him. He has made money, nevertheless, and those who have bought his grain have made fortunes. We want, as the Premier said, a little more manly hope, and a little less dismal croaking. We live in a country in which there is room for a population of millions. We have vast resources, and a fine climate. We have spent nearly twenty millions of money in fourteen years in making the country attractive to the foreign labourer and the foreign capitalist, to the foreign man of shrewd brain and skilful hand; and useful both to the diligent producer, who, from the heart of the wilderness he is conquering: has a road to his p#’t; and to the prosperous settler, who, in the midst of what was once the wilderness, is surrounded by all the appliances hitherto to be found only in countries whose civilisation is numbered by centuries Of time. To talk of ruin is distempered madness. Strangers who come here unbiassed, who go through our towns, who see our cornfields, pastures, mines, and workshops, who get .glimpses of our forests, and are carried in our well-appointed steamships, who revel in our climate, and note the crowds well dressed and, in a great measure, money spending,that turnout on great holidays; strangers who see these things do not com® to the conclusion that they are in a country where the only remedy is for everybody to clear out. An observant stranger sees also our trade Gazettes, as well as our unemployed, and knowing that prices are low, knows that things are not by any means what they ought to he. But even the most prejudiced straliger can not take with him any impression that vhe Colony has passed beyond the influence of selfreliance, resource, patience, and enterprise. As there are some among us in high commercial pcsitious, who appear to give way to the tendency to croak, the Premier’s exhortation to better things may he regarded as a word in season.