OUR LETTER HOME.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 8148, 20 April 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

OUR LETTER HOME.

POLITICAL AND OTHER GOSStP. FINANCE. Sir Julius Yogel, in his Christchurch address, placed the financial position very fairly before the country. “We can only economise by departmental retrenchment up to a certain point. You won’t allow us to cut down education and defence, the only two departments in which a really great saving can be looked for. Circumstances over which we have no control compel the Colony to continue moderate borrowing, and so to add to the permanent charges. We have a big deficit to pay off and to prevent the recurrence of. How will you take your remedy ? Property tax or Customs, or both ? Remember that the Property tax cannot be expected to supply it all ? ” There we have the whole thing in a nutshell. We must make up our minds to an increase of Customs Duties. • If one thing has been made more clear than another by the Treasurer’s speech, it is that the Government intend to straighten up the Colonial Finance completely and permanently. Reflection must convince any ordinary mind that the Customs must play a large part in the process. NO DIFFICULTY. What prevents the Treasurer from following the example of the gentleman who presides over the same department at Sydney ? Sir Julius will, we hope, have the courage to do so by giving ns a handsome balance to his Budget, handsome enough to warrant him in promising to clear off the floating debt in a given time. It is easy -enough. He will have a deficit of £200,000, which will he repeated next year if not provided against, with the addition of some .£50,000 for additional loan interest, making in all a quarter of a million to find on the basis of last year’s expenditure. Now the means at his disposal are— Retrenchment as declared by Mr Ballance ... ... ••• £30,000 Tea and sugar duties (extra) ... 180,000 Spirit duties (by abolitions, reductions and making a slight increase)... ... ... 40,000 Ad Valorem, slight increase ... 50,000 Property tax „ ... 50,000 \ £350,000 This, by leaving a margin for reduction of the floating debt and the increase of departmental expenditure would make the finance sound. The advantage could be improved later by handing the railways i .over to a Board, saving £BO,OOO in the * process, which would meet the increased interest of fresh loans, which all the authorities on both sides of the House are agreed we cannot get on without (in moderation) for some years. THE FINANCE OF 1884. The Opposition are declaring that the finance of 1884 has collapsed. According to the principles then laid down, borrowing was to continue at a rate equal to the increase of the revenue, of the railway re- ' ceipta, and the diminution of charges by Consolidation. It is true that the revenue and the railways have not answered expectations, but that is nobody’s fault. Nobody on the Opposition side, however, contends that borrowing must absolutely cease. Why then criticise in this way ? MB RICHARDSON AT KAIAPOI. The speech of the Public Works Minister is chiefly remarkable for the announcement that Government intend to ask for the establishment of Boards of Advice to help the Department to manage the railways. This means that Ministers have at last determined to take the advice given them two years ago by the representatives of tbe Associated Chambers of Commerce assembled in Conference at Wellington. It means, too, that the public, anxious for the suppression of political r’ailway management, will have to put up with half a loaf for fear of going hungry. It may go hungry, nevertheless. REPRESENTATION. The Government intention is now clear with regard to this measure. The Opposition may feel disappointed that it is not to be shelved, for then they would have made capital out of broken promises. The number of members is to be kept up, which will avoid a grave difficulty, and there is to be a concession to * the country districts, which is only right and proper, and is likewise another oiling of the wheels. The best compromise will be for the country members to swallow the Customs for the sake of the concessions on tbe Representation Bill. That Sir Julius Vogel’s announcement of these concessions represents the final Ministerial decision we have on the authority of our Wellington correspondent. LAND ACQUISITION BILL. Mr Ballance’s Bill is brief, simple, and easily to be understood, qualities not so rare in enactments of the present time as ' they once were. It is a measure for enabling people to acquire from the State on the freeholds of other people, leasehold farms of not more than 100 acres, at 5 per cent on the valuation at which they move the State to purchase, and on condition of paying a quarter of that -valuation for the privilege of occupying, and for the cost of preliminary expenses of survey, reading, and so forth. The State is to pay for the land in cash or land bonds, the latter being Sir G. Grey’s idea. No purchase is to be made without enquiry as to its necessity and as to the ability of tbe purchasers to settle the land; in no case is tbe price to be above tbe Property tax valuation, and the consent of the present holders is not indispensable, though always to be preferred. There is here a guarantee against the repetition of monopoly under another name ; there is relief for mortgagors oppressed, justice for | all, and provision for settlement, without W—" coat to the State. The difficulties are as to the guarantee of the settlers for the annual interest; aa to the disposition of mortgagees to accept the land bonds, and the value of these in the Australian and New

Zealand markets; and as to the limit of price that people can afford to pay. With these provided for the measure ought to do great good. If it increases settlement of the right kind it will be incalculably beneficial. THE BILL’S CRITICS. The Opposition is fulminating against the measure. It will, they say, drive capital away from the country by unsettling the security of landed property. It is not improbable that this method of criticism will do what the measure will not do, drive away capital by frightening it with a bugbear. The measure itself contains the fullest safeguards against unfairness, and against loss to the State. By requiring from applicants to purchase, p, deposit of five-and-twenty per cent on the value, it exacts a guarantee not only of bona fide s, but of the necessary skill and capital for farming purposes. By the appointment of Commissioners and the erection of a Land Court it provides a guarantee for absolute fairness. By giving the Govemor-in-Council a discretionary power to accept or reject the recommendation of the Commissioners and the Land Court, it precludes the possibility of speculation attracted by sudden improvements in the value of land. Whether the right class of people contemplated by the measure exists in the country in sufficient numbers to take advantage of its provisions may be doubted. Time alone will tell us. To condemn the Bill on that account is premature. To condemn it on any other is unjust and impolitic. THE PREMIER AT WAIPAWA. Upon this last point of the Wellington— Manawatu history, the Premier does not seem to have forgotten to dilate to some extent, though he does not appear to have been quite so hard as he might have been on the Government which perpetrated the grave blunder of dropping tbe best railway in the public programme, and giving away a quantity of valuable work and material by way of encouraging a private Company to make its fortune. Sir Robert’s speech was mostly confined to the exposition of his viev s on the land question ; which he successfully proved to have been consistent always, from their first utterance to the present hour. It is a satisfactory proof that, like a wise man. Sir Robert Stout is content to get from the Colony as much as he can of his original theories, and determined to do the best he can with the remainder. This kind of reformer will always do good service without throwing things into confusion or arousing class hatreds. MB BBYC^J We suppose Mr Bryce represented the Opposition programme in his reply to the Premier. At all events, there is very little else in the way of an Opposition programme before the country. The main feature of the programme seems to be that Mr Bryce was once a very good Native Minister, which means that Mr Bryce’s party intends, if it gets into power, to improve upon Mr Ballance by reversing the engine. The country, which has had experience of Mr Ballance, will probably have its own ideas about the matter. Nobody of course denies that Mr Bryce was a firm Minister, but nobody can believe that Mr Bryce saved the Colony from a Maori rising. The beggarly result of the seizure of arms at Parihaka settled that question before Mr Bryce left office. Without Mr Bryce’s firmness before him Mr Ballance probably would not have gone so far as he has gone. But without his own good judgment, tact, diplomatic ability, and as tenacious a firmness as Mr Bryce’s, Mr Ballance would have done nothing. There are some discontents among the Maoris yet, but were there any contents when Mr Bryce retired ? So much for the past and the present. What of the future ? There is no originality and there is no grasp of things. We learn from Mr Bryce nothing about the intentions of the Opposition except that the Government is to be opposed. MB MONTGOMERY. Mr Montgomery has told us almost as much, in one of his big speeches which the Akaroa people admire. To blame the Government for the past, and let them get deeper into the mire, in the immediate future—that seems to be the Opposition programme. But how the Opposition can avoid helping the Government to straighten the finance, it is difficult in the face of such speeches as Mr Montgomery’s to tell. Mr Montgomery, however, is far more likely to act fairly in this matter than most of the Opposition. MR BALLANCE AT WANGANUI. As usual Mr Ballance demolishes Mr Bryce. It is not statement against statement about the credit of getting the King Natives to put their lands through the Court. There is the fact that Mr Bryce deprived Bewi of his pension. Why did he do that if Eewi was not obstructing his policy of getting the lands through the Court ? In the same manner we may ask if the lands bought by the present Government are valueless, why will people give long rents for them ? But the exposure of Mr Bryce’s fallacies is ’ a thrice told tale, and, therefore, not any longer interesting, thanks, of course, to Mr Ballance. The main interest of his speech consists in tbe assurance that retrenchment as promised will save £30,000 or £40,000, leaving a vast deficit to make up by taxation of some kind; that 900 married couples have been settled during the year under the easy provisions of the Land Act; that in all probability the Government will agree to a concession to the country demands regarding the Representation Bill; that the reduction of the number of members is no part of the Ministerial programme. In addition Mr Ballance, of course, reviewed with energetic favour the whole career of the Government, and he did it well. We can see that at the next election there is a very good case for the Government. MR ORMOND AT NAPIER. A much better defence of the Government than has ever been made in any quarter has ust com© from Mr Ormond.

Mr Ormond still flatters himself that he is a leading politician, and therefore begins his speech by telling his hearers that he has been silently waiting for the Government to give an index of their policy. It appears, however, that the neglect of the Government to furnish Mr Ormond with the matter on which leaders alone can speak, has left him without any matter at all on which to hold forth. He falls back on his own proposal to lease the railways, which in some inscrutable way he has discovered to be generally favoured, and takes refuge in his own great services to Napier and the Colony—he was a member of the Government which passed the Education Bill Some exceptions to this interesting line there are in the shape of references to politics, but they are conspicuous for their utter fallacy. The Government wanted once to get an enormous revenue by taxing the necessaries of life; but Mr Ormond prevented them; the first part of which is not true, and the second of which is discreditable to nobody so much as Mr Ormond. The Committee which failed to curse the Treasurer last session at Mr Ormond’s suggestion is not to be trusted; whereas its chief claim to public confidence is that it distrusted Mr Ormond. Government are to be scouted because they refrained from making the Napier Railway in order to punish him, which in the. first place is not true, and in the second is according to the principles of the party with whom Mr Ormond habitually acts. The main point of interest in the speech of such a thorough-paced partisan is that there is not any indictment of the Government. What more can we have in their favour P It is not that Mr Ormond is setting a great example of noble forbearance, as we have seen he worried, and worried wrongly, about small things. MB BALLANCE AND THE SUPREME COURT. What Mr Ballance said at Wanganui was not that the Legislature should be made a Court of Appeal from the Supreme Court. It has been gravely held by solemn people that Mr Ballance has declared his determination to hang by Parliamentary process all men whom the Supreme Court has acquitted in the face of an adverse public opinion. This is amusing nonsense, not made less amusing by the fact that writers who have written columns to get into such a bog, have been obliged to write columns to get out again. What Mr Ballance really did say was that, in his opinion, there ought to be a Judicial Committee of both Houses to investigate all decisions on matters of law, with a view to suggest amendments in the law for Parliamentary consideration. Even of this much horror has been expressed : chiefly on the ground that the Government discharges the duty which Mr Ballance would give to a Committee. But the fact is that all Governments perform that duty so perfunctorily as to prove the necessity for Mr Ballanee’s Committee. As nobody denies that there are anomalies in law, nobody can reasonably object to a reasonable method of reducing their number by constitutional process. GOOD FRIDAY. Sir Robert Stout showed a very commendable care for the religious feelings of a large number of people by interfering to postpone the review and sham fight in Auckland to some other day. In this he gave an example of his practical good sense. He has shown that, though not himself feeling the sacredness of the day in question, he can appreciate the importance of not outraging the feelings of those who do. His political opponents who object that his legislation is opposed to what they call his fade, might just as well insist that he ought to have thrown his weight into the scale of the disregarded of the sacredness of Good Friday. That would be consistent on their part. THE JUBILEE COMMITTEE. The Provincial Committee of Canterbury has come to a wise conclusion, after exhaustive and courteous discussion. The project it has adopted of erecting a refuge for old age as a memorial of the Jubilee year, cannot but be agreeable to Her Majesty, who is distinguished for the thoughtful care she always bestows on the poor and the afflicted among her numerous subjects. The time, too, is favourable for a substantial sum, for the Government grant of pound for pound is open, and the Charitable Aid Board are in funds, and animated by a sincere desire to subscribe handsomely out of them. It has been said that the Queen has particularly approved of the proposal for an Imperial Institute. But that is the strongest reason for a national subscription voted by Parliament. A technical Educational Institute was proposed, and a Commercial and Industrial Museum, and a statue to Her Majesty. The last was rejected as too local to appeal to the district, and the others on the very good grounds that the existing provision for education of all sorts is already large, and that we have museums and industrial institutions galore amongst us. To the Home a large general support is promised, and that promise carried the day very largely. NAFIER-WOODVILLE. The ceremony of Tuesday, March 22, marks the approach of the long-desired completion of through communication between Wellington and Napier. The Napier section has been for time the best paying section of the Colonial railways, a circumstance which alone is enough to cause general rejoicing that the gap which now remains is so small. And it is not alone, for the country which will be served by the completed line is a new district, rich in soil and timber, the home of a hardy, ipduatrious, and fast increasing population. Truly, as we look on this line, we can say —“ Advance New Zealand.” MB ATIGDOB. Mr Avigdor has justified the argument by which it was represented that a Syndicate, if it got the Midland Railway contract, would do its best to develop the resources of the Midland District. His proposal which has been taken up by the representatives of the Company here, for a

Museum of West Coast products, is an event in Colonial history. The results that await it form the strongest inducement to everyone who can do so, to cooperate to the utmost extent of his opportunities and endeavours. FROZEN MUTTON. The main burden of the speeches at the meeting of the Canterbury Company consisted in persistent grumbling at good steamers and bad monopolies. It is curious to hear these complaints against the steamers, but io would be more so to see the shippers bless the monopoly. To judge by tbeir speeches at this meeting, they seem to be preparing for the monopoly a real blessing. That which converts people from the error of their ways and brings them back gently into right paths, whether of morality or commerce—the right paths of the latter being, of course, cheapness and selfsacrifice—is eminently areal blessing to the misguided. In other words, the only grindstone for the faceof monopoly is competition. It is like Necessity, the mother of invention. Monopolists who can scarcely contrive to make both ends meet, generally discover under pressure of competition how to live comfortably. Such is the verdict of all monopolistic history. THE MARY KING. After three years, a plank from this ill-fated barquentine has floated up on a point of the Queensland coast and been recognised. Anxious friends thus have their anxiety set at rest by the melancholy certainty of the story which the ocean has given up. It is seldom that a message like this comes back from the great unknown to remind us of the kindly friends we knew in the mellowness of their days, of the hopeful youths we saw set forth in their happy pride, of the bread-winners and the sons whose loss has caused such agony of sorrowful hearts. But having come back, the message so silent eloquently has, by re-opening old wounds, made preparations for their complete cure. NEW SOUTH WALES. —(A MORAL). The presence of energetic, capable politicians is evident at last. Sir Patrick and his friends and enemies (we mean his colleagues) groaned away from year to year over a deficit growing larger and larger until it grew to £2,000,000. The excuse was that the Upper House would not let them impose taxes. Sir Henry Parkes comes bodly down with spirit duties and excise, a retrenchment policy of £450,000, and a tariff of twenty-four ad valorem ' duties, with a profit balance of £BOO,OOO for the year, and a proposal to pay off the deficit in eight years. An ad valorem tariff is rather a heroic measure for a professed Freetrader, but desperate cases require heroic remedies. The great fact is that whereas the Jennings Government destroyed the credit of their Colony by a perpetually recurring deficit, the present men begin by estimating a huge and phenomenal surplus. “Assume a virtue if you have it not.” There is true patriotism in the maxim. NEW ZEALAND SHIPPING COMPANY. It is pleasing to learn that the affairs of this institution are once more flourishing, and that everything is as it should be, —London Directorate, finance, and the rest. May we hope that more room will be found in consequence for the frozen meat trade. Here we have what prospectus writers are fond of calling a “ long felt want.” The trade languishes for want of the necessary tonnage. That tonnage it is the business of shipping companies to furnish. How P That is their business, too. If they do not do it, the world evokes the spectre of competition. THE LYTTELTON CASE. The jury have believed the plaintiffs’ side of the question, which is that the negligence of the unlicensed pilot caused the disaster—(l) by causing the ship to drift too near tho shore, and (2) by dropping the anchor at such a time and in such a position aa to drive a hole through the ship’s bottom. The other side of the question was that the master of the tugging steamer was responsible for the erratic course which both agree was steered, and that the vessel was not sunk by her anchor, the diver who saw the anchor ‘having been unable to discriminate between several anchors which were all lying together in the submarine darkness after the ship broke up. As a new trial has been applied for, it may be said with greater truth than ever to be a remarkably fine case for the lawyers. Other Harbour Boards are, we observe, in a flutter, and properly so, wanting to know what their position is with regard to vessels going in and out of their harbours. Sir Robert Stout has advised the Lyttelton Board that the Board is not responsible so long as the pilot has been properly appointed—which he was not at Timaru. Mr C. W. Turner, a merchant of great experience in shipping matters, and probably speaking with legal authority, told the Board that there is responsibility for the gross negligence of even a properly appointed pilot. Tbelawyers for the plaintiffs in the Lyttelton case were clearly of Mr Turner’s opinion. All eyes are turned expectantly on the Privy Council to which distant tribunal the Lyttelton case is, everybody thinks, to be dragged. Surely the question ought to be less difficult of solution and less costly. Fancy in an age of common sense being unable to clear up a simple point without great loss of time and money ! POISONED MEAT. One of those dreadful accidents which cast a whole population into mourning has happened in the North. In the secure hour of hospitality, the easy hour when the mind expands under the influence of good cheer and graceful courtesy, the sacred hour when to think of danger is to feel traitorous, death has come to three of our fellow-creatures, and considerable danger of it to several others. The melancholy deaths of Hakuene (who pathetically preferred the society of hia friends to the best medical advice), and of Renata and Piverata, remind us of a fatality which occurred in on© of

the Midland towns some thirty years ago Birmingham, if we remember right. Tinned meat is said to have been the destructive agent, and one of the northern medical gentlemen says that a pie was sent to table without the usual hole for the steam and gases to escape, but - upon these points analysis will give us the necessary information. In the meantime we can only express our deep regret at the loss of the valuable lives that have gone. Their people will miss them all, and the House of Representatives will miss Hakuene, whom it always heard with pleasure and treated with the respect due to an honourable man and a high chief. Mr Bishop deserves great credit for having persuaded the Natives to overcome their by no means unnatural aversion to the desecration of the bodies of their friends by dissection. THE NECESSITY FOB FEDERATION. It is like the famous chapter on snakes in Ireland. “ There are no snakes.” So there is no necessity for Federation. The list of subjects before the Imperial Conference, and the speeches prove it most exclusively. Defence, ocean cables and their subsidy, postal matters, judgments of Colonial Courts, saving life at sea, a simultaneous census. These are all matters that can be regulated and attended to by occasional conferences such as the present Conference. That is Federation enough for the Colonies. When the Victorian delegate, Mr Deakin, said that the Imperial navy is the backbone of Imperial Federation, he said that we have already a system of Federation sufficient for our wants and circumstances. Then we have a defensive force under Imperial command, to which we are ready to subscribe. It is a machinery sufficiently good for our purpose. THE IMPERIAL CONFERENCE. It would be a great mistake to ignore tbe value of what is being done in London at the present moment. An amount of goodwill towards the Colonies and things Colonial is being displayed, which is in every way worthy of the Jubilee year of a great reign, and an earnest of the best possible relations between the Mother Country and her great dependencies. It is very satisfactory to observe that our AgentGeneral has come in, during the festivities, for the lion’s share of praise, for his usefulness, tact, energy, and great ability. THE VOLUNTEERS. New Zealand has, during tbe Easter holidays, put into the field 6000 men well enough trained, equipped and officered to be regarded as regular troops. That is the first thing that strikes one on reading the accounts of the various encampments: and from that one infers that at last our duty to protect ourselves as a nation is being well done. The cohesion, mobility, endurance, activity and enthusiasm diplayed by all arms and ranks are things that are too valuable to be appraised by measuring words. They make our citizen Volunteer forces many times more formidable than tbeir numbers entitle them to be considered on paper. It was precisely such material that composed the old Greek army, whose wonderful feat of arms at Marathon the world has not yet ceased to admire, and which it has never equalled. A little wildness of spirits there was, here and there, whichhas very much scandalised the “uncoguid,” by whom we mean certain scribes who are anxious to be Pharisees, who have not refrained from grievous exaggeration. Bat after all a spice of the devil is good in soldiery; and if youth in rude health and boisterous spirits cannot kick up its heels a little, there is not much chance of its ever doing any good. Prigs would not have done what the Volunteers did at Taranaki, but prigs would neither be willing notable to do what these high-spirited youngsters are sure to do in the presence of an enemy. 1 THE MANAWATU COMPANY. This Railway Company has lately furnished us with the two best items of news received of late from the North Island. In the first place the Company has sold 11,000 acres of land in ninety-six lots, by public auction, for £17,500, a circumstance which justifies the policy of land concessions to large Companies for public works, by proving that it is their interest to sell to the honi fide cultivator, not to the speculator. In this connection we must, in fairness, remember that the state of credit is not at present favourable to the speculator, who is hy nature an impecunious as well as rapacious animal. It is not probable, by the way, that the state of credit ever will again be favourable to him, for he has taught the world by sad experience, chiefly in Canterbury, that tho cost of hia borrowed plumes is more than the world can bear. In the second place, the Company has worked its railway three months at the rate of five per cent per annum, without any complaint from its district. The value of the line is proved, the future of the district is beginning to be realised, and tbe principle of non political management does not stand discredited. Lastly, one cannot help wondering what the politicians were about who to throw discredit on their predecessors, cut this railway out of the railway programme they had left behind them, and gave to influential supporters of their own a handsome opportunity to make a still handsomer profit. Political rancour is of course always honest, but it is sometimes uncommonly given to suspicious blunders. FREE LIBRAnY, While Auckland enjoys a magnificent Free Library, the institution controlled and one day destined to be strangled by the Board of Governors of Canterbury College grows seedier from day to day, while the Governors talk mysteriously and learnedly .about the lowness of subscriptions and the desire they all have to do something. The case here is confused, as it is not confused in Auckland by the connection of a Circulating Library with the Reference Library. Bat, not long ago, the Govtiuc.-fc tear to driving the

institution of the Reference Library altogether, and were only prevented by the fierce spirit of public opinion which they evoked. That Library they systematically starved then, and have starved ever since. The College funds ought to be held as in trust for keeping up this valuable gift which Provincialism left to the district, a gift which its intrinsic merit ought to induce the Governors of the College to maintain. The Circulating Library stands on a different footing altogether, in the matter of a claim on public funds. A Circulating Library affords amusement which people can pay for if they want it. A Reference Library gives access to information not accessible to the average purse. Of all the educators and humanisers among us, none equals a fine library. The Board of Governors does not seem to be as fully aware of the fact as it might be.