MR C. W. PURNELL AT ASHBURTON.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXVIII, Issue 8247, 13 August 1887, Page 6

MR C. W. PURNELL AT ASHBURTON.

On Thursday evening Mr C. W. Purnell, the candidate who has at last made up his mind to declare himself as in the lists for Ashburton against Mr W. C. Walker, addressed the electors, in the Oddfellows’ Hall. The weather was anything but agreeable. A bail and rain laden gale had come up from the.south in late afternoon, and left at its partial subsidence, about half-past seven, a cold breeze, bitter enough, in its coldness, to cut one in two. This state of affairs, as well as the want of enthusiasm on the part of the electors, tended, no doubt, to keep away from the hall many of Mr Purnell’s opponents, so thatthe attendance was poor, and at no time in the evening were there a hundred persons present ; in fact, when the show of hands took place at the close, as between "thanks” and “confidence,” there were altogether in the hall, including Chairman, candidate, reporters, hall-keeper, and constable, just ninety-four people. Mr T. Sealy, Mayor of Ashburton, occupied the chair, and introduced Mr Purnell, who was received with applause. He said be was a reluctant candidate for the Ashburton seat, because he was opposing a gentleman for whom he entertained the highest personal respect. But when he heard Mr Walker at Ashburton say that there was really to be no practical retrenchment, but that a load of fresh taxation would have to be imposed to make good the Colony’s financial leeway; that the action of Mr Ballance in spending in hia department ,£60,000 of unauthorised funds was justifiable; and again at Rakaia that if returned he would support the Stout- Vogel Administration he (Mr Purnell) felt that it was high time some one should come forward to oppose Mr Walker, and give those electors who did not agree with the policy of the present Ministry an opportunity of recording their protests at the ballot-box against the views they held. He knew that' Mr Walker had a strong following in the electorate, of gentlemen of influence and position. Personally, he was well acquainted with many of those gentlemen, and had close business relations with them, and knew well he would get no support of theirs; but he also knew that he would receive a largo measure of support from electors in the district who had no sympathy at all with the present Government. The present Government had done all they could to lead the electors away from the great point at issue, and had said that if the Government were ousted from office the reins of power would be handed over to Major Atkinson. In fact, the electors had been led to believe that there was no choice between Sir Julius Vogel and Major Atkinson—if the one were rejected the other must be accepted. This ho made bold to say was all nonsense. If either or both of these gentlemen, and all the other old political hacks were out of the Colony to-morrow, there would be plenty of men left in the country to govern it. RETRENCHMENT. Both Government and Parliament in talking of retrenchment had always turned their eyes towards cutting down Civil Servants’ wages. This was one way of saving to he sure, but was not the only way, nor was it the way in which the greatest saving could be effected. Our whole system of government reconstruction, and many of the functions discharged in Wellington at great cost could be better, and at infinitely less cost, discharged by Local Bodies. In fact, no real retrenchment could be effected, and Government bad been decentralised in a very great degree. The Colony was now in the position of a man who had for years been living beyond his means. If he wore a sensible man he would at once begin to cut down his expenditure and to do without many luxuries he had before enjoyed so that his income would be able to cover what he spent. If he were a fool he would go on spending as before, and then he would suddenly find himself brought up at the door of the Bankruptcy Court. The bone of a recent speech of Mr Larnach was that further retrenchment was almost impossible. Sir Robert Stout had owned up to a possible saving of £IOO,OOO without even touching at all the education vote. Mr Tole had in one of his speeches said £40,000 could he saved on the education vote. Well, if in face of Mr Larnach’s statement Sir Robert Stout could go £IOO,OOO, and Mr Tole could go £40,000 better than Sir Robert, it was very evident that if the Ministry were in earnest very much larger sums could be saved than those given by the gentlemen named. Mr Purnell dwelt at some| length on statistics showing this, and then went on to very adversely criticise Sir Robert Stout’s proposed loan of £2,000,000 to construct the Otago Central line and the Helenaville line. He spoke of this proposal in much the same way as Mr Rolleston had done in hia recent speeches, and went on to point out that every million borrowed meant an extra annual payment of £40,000, and this loan of two millions would thus mean another £BO,OOO a year of extra taxation, which was the Government’s programme. The speaker then went on to give figures, the object of which was to show that since the Atkinson Government had gone out of office, the cost of administration bad very largely increased. He pointed out thatthe rates paid on Native lands had been paid by the Atkinson Government out of ordinary revenue. Sir Julius Vogel, finding himself hard up, had paid it out of loan. In regard to the Armed Constabulary cost, the same thing had been done. In fact, if he were to go as fully as he could into figures without wearying his hearers, it would he found that Government proposed to tax the Colony with an increase of £350,000. Government proposed by their graduated Property-tax to raise an additional £75,000, and to knock off. the subsidies to Local Bodies. Charitable aid bad already been shunted on to the Local Bodies, and the administration of the charitable aid funds was situated in the large towns. By the latter arrangement, the country had to pay an undue and unjust proportion, while, by the awkwardness of having to travel long distances to take part in the business of these Boards, the country districts had failed to find men willing to submit to the inconvenience, and so were practically unrepresented in the matter of the administration of charitable aid. The Treasurer had proposed to reduce the subsidies to Local Bodies, but if all these proposals were carried out, he would still be unable to make both ends meet, and Mr Purnell quoted figures, the purport of which was to show that the finances of the Colony, in Sir Julius YogeTs hands, had got into a hopeless mess. The first charge the Colony had to pay was three and a half millions of interest on loans. Three years ago,.in Ashburton, Sir Julius Vogel had hinted at a financial card he held up his sleeve. That card turned out to be the BetetUffc of the Sinking Fund? This sort of talk he (the speaker) was now indulging in was not palatable to those who bowed down before THE VOGEL FETICH, and thought Sir Julius a financial deity. Mr Parnell disputed altogether the necessity for the threatened additional taxation, or for a great deal of it at least, and thought that before additional taxation -was talked about the pruning knife should be applied, with a view to saving. If salaries were to be reduced at all, the pruning knife ought to begin its operations on that of the Governor, following up with the Ministers, to show that they themselves were in earnest in this matter. But perhaps it was not generally understood that Ministers could very easily, if they chose, increase their salaries to a very great degree by travelling allowances. The speaker went on to refer to Sir Robert Stoat’s vogage to Wellington, for which the Hiuemoahad been specially sent down, and to the habit the Ministers had of travelling in special trains and carriages. He thought that off the Ministers’ travelling allowances 20 per cent could very well come, and he could remember the time when Ministers had only one Secretary among them, hut now each Minister had one each, and some of them had two; yet government was as well carried on in those

unpretentious and economical times as it was now. REDUCTION OF MEMBERS. On this question the speaker differed from Mr Walker, and regretted that gentleman had not seen his way to support the reduction to 70. He himself had no fear that any of the evils prophesied by Mr Walker would overtake the Colony as attendant upon the reduction of the members to 70. The increase to the present number was a matter of only recent occurrence, and had only been brought about by the fact that when more adequate representation of a large extent of recently settled country was demanded, as well as of towns that had largely increased in population, the plan of increasing the members was adopted in preference to readjusting and redistributing the seats. Had the latter plan been adopted, the chances were that many members at that time holding seats would have had to surrender them to other claimants. After pointing out several officers of the Legislature who could very well suffer a reduction in their "screws,” Mr Purnell went on to say that the NATIVE DEPARTMENT could now be dispensed with altogether. It seemed to him that it was only retained to give Mr Ballance an opportunity of advertising his ability to grapple with the supposed Native difficulty. When that hon gentleman went to see an old shark's-tooth-ornamented Maori, rubbed noses with him, and received his Maori greeting —Tenakoe, pakeha a clerk rushed off to the the nearest telegraph office and flashed over the Colony the information that the great Ballance had settled the Maori difficulty. Those periodical settlements always reminded him of the late Mr William Hoskins, the player, and his final farewell benefits. Mr Purnell had attended twelve or thirteen " final farewell benefits” taken by Mr Hoskins, but somehow the old man always turned up again next season, and the benefit had to be repeated. However frequently the Maori difficulty had been reported as finally settled, somehow it always crops up again to be settled afresh with kudos to the Minister who goes out in pomp to do it. Sir Donald M'Lean had been the best Native Minister the Colony ever possessed, and he had said that it ought to be only a temporary institution. The speaker advocated the abolition of the Department altogether, retaining only one or two officers to see to such needful details as required attention, such officers to be handed over to, say, the Colonial Secretary’s office. After a reference to the undue financial attention the mining interest had received of late, which would have the effect of securing in thirlage to Government the whole of the Westland members, Mr Purnell went on to deal with FBBETKADE AND PROTECTION. Government had brought down proposals to raise by increased Customs duties the sum of .£175,000 on the plea of protection for local industries. Ho could not see how the two ends of increased revenue and Protection could be served by this step, and he looked upon it as simply a bogus cry to cover the increased taxation. In proof of this, he quoted from Sir Julius Vogel’s 1885 Budget to show that then the Treasurer had " distinctly abjured a policy of Protection.” Yet he now embraced that policy, and if he were to abjure it again, and afterwards to adopt a middle coarse, those people who have the Vogel mania bad would still cry “ Hear, hear.” In looking over the proposed new Tariff, he found that the increases from which most money would be derived, were upon articles of common consumption in the homes of working men—rough cottons and hollands, for instance. Surely Sir Julius Vogel didnot fancy for one moment that such Protection as that would induce the establishment of cotton factories in this Colony. It had been stated that Canada had started these factories. Well, there was nothing to be surprised at in that, seeing that the railway communication of Canada with the cotton producing States was perfect, and the tariffs on those lines so lenient. But we were infinitely further from the raw material than Canada, and it was simply impossible to procure it. (A voice : “ Fiji.” Then a very large proportion of the articles farmers used, and could not procure without importing, had been unduly tariffed, and consequently the farmers would have to suffer without, the extra taxation they would have to pay, in any way helping to foster local industries. In this Colony we bad numerous industries, and in some cases these had been able to drive the foreign articles out of the market. Ho referred particularly, in this connection, to the goods made by some of our leading agricultural implement makers, which were really preferred to the foreign goods. We had woollen factories, clothing factories, boob and shoe factories, foundries in which even locomotive engines were made, and many others, of perhaps less note, but still of importance. Our own market, representing a population of 600,000, was a limited one. Where was the outlet for our manufactures to he found ? Australia was protecting her own industries, and would be careful to reject ours. Are we going into the markets of the world ? If so, we must be able to compete in these markets, and to do so we must be able to undersell our competitors. With the wages we pay here for labour, could we for a moment think of meeting manufacturers who were paying for their skilled labour a shilling and eighteenpence a day? He feared not. Nor did we come over to this Colony to try to establish such a state of affairs as had so long existed in the Old Country. No ; we came here to establish, if we could, a better one—one under which a man could earn enough to keep himself and family upon in comfort, and also be in a position to cultivate the higher moral and intellectual faculties of his nature. Those ends could not be attained by a high Customs Tariff. The Australian Colonies had put a heavy tax on our cheese and butter, so that we had been almost driven out of that market, so that if we put a wall of protection round our shores other Colonies would do the same. It was foolish indeed to quarrel with the countries who were our best customers for wheat and wool, and this was just what a heavy protective Tariff would bring about. He had been called an out-and-out Freetrader, but he was quite prepared to accept the present Tariff as it stood, because some industries had grown up under it and would suffer were it reduced. He had always been a supporter of local industries, and had, as they knew, put his money into a good many of them. That was, to his mind, a better way to support them than by going upon a platform and shouting Protection, but taking good care to keep your money in your pocket. TAXATION OF CAPITAL. The speaker very adversely criticised the proposed progressive Property-tax, and said that the only way to induce capital to come into this Colony was to withdraw all hindrances and let it come in freely, not handicap it with a heavy load of special taxation. Every man should be taxed according to his means, but the principle of putting "a disproportionately heavy taxation on capital would only have the effect of driving it out of the Colony. There were other countries in the world besides New Zealand for men with money to go to, and if the wealthy men withdrew their wealth from the Colony the working men had to suffer, for it was to the men with cash the working men had to look for employment and payment for their labour. EDUCATION was a costly item to this Colony. Its cost had been put down at half-a- million per annum, but this did not include the revenue received from educational reserves, nor the interest of money spent on school buildings, for all those buildings had been erected out of loan. Sir Robert Stout had given utterance to a fanatically strong opinion about our educational system, and Mr Larnach had found it necessary in a recent speech to almost apologise for this opinion of Sir Robert. But it was nonsense to say the Education Act was objectionless. Ten years’ experience of it had shown that it was not so. For reasons with which they were all familiar, the Catholics had objected to it, and had refused to make use of its advantages, preferring rather to build their own schools and bear the cost themselves of their maintenance. For a similar reason, the Church of England had objected to it,

though, they had not gone so far as the Catholics; perhaps they were not so unanimous. And a strong Bible-m-schools party of all denominations of Christians had found fault with the Act. Then the principle of the cumulative vote in School Committee elections had been impugned, so that it was idle to say that the Act was perfect. When it was said that it was the Government’s duty to see that the children were educated, what was said was right, but it was a mistake for Government to undertake the work itself, except in remote country districts. In large towns they ought to have fostered private schools, slightly subsidised and placed under Government inspection. He felt tha; the present system had upon the Colony’s shoulders a load that it would not much longer be able to bear. After expressing his opinion that Bible reading in schools should be optional on all parties, he went on to say that there was a great and noticeable want of reverence in the rising generation for noble and holy things, and a nation that disregarded morality was a doomed nation, and morality, bethought, was founded on religion. ADer a graceful reference to the religious plank in the platform of the Primrose League, Mr Purnell went on to say that Government should withdraw from the schools in towns, and let these drop back again into the hands of the people who wanted their children trained in religion and morals. Then, quite a large proportion of the children of the Colony were taught at private schools as it was now, independent altogether of any religious feeling; so that it was quite evident that those who were educating their children in this way were not altogether enthusiastic about the public system of education. There has been, too, he thought, some extravagance in the building of schools and school masters’ houses throughout the Colony, and it was worthy of note that to educate Catholic children cost only <£3 a head. Government never could do its work as cheaply as private individuals. The establishments for higher and secondary education ought to be more self-sup-porting, and greater attention ought to be paid to the imparting of technical education. Three years ago he had read a paper on this subject before the Philosophical Institute in Christchurch. His ideas had then been sneered at, but he was glad to see that most of the gentlemen who did so then were adopting those ideas now. After a sarcastic reference to the still non-ex-istent though much-promised non-political Railway Boards, the speaker bitterly attacked the

PERPETUAL LEASING idea of the present Government, saying that freehold was the best tenure a man could have ; that land had actually been refused to farmers who came cash in hand to buy it, and that simply because the land was wanted for disposal under this faddish perpetual leasing system. VILLAGE SETTLEMENTS were no doubt a valuable thing; but he thought Government had not considered whether the people would remain on the land after the Government support had been withdrawn. THE COSTLINESS OF BORROWING. Mr Purnell went on to notice the number of charges upon the public purse that had been met out of loan, and pointed out how expensive borrowing was. To raise the loans we had paid in commission, &c., something like £870,000. This money, too, had been borrowed, and we were still paying interest upon it, though it had never come into the Colony’s exchequer. 600,000 people owed £91,000,000, and of this sum £60,000,000 were owing outside the Colony, and the debt increases every year. The question of most importance to the Colony at present was. Shall we retrench with an unsparing hand, or shall we go on borrowing recklessly as before until we can borrow no more ? They knew which of the two courses he had been advocating. If they endorsed his views, he asked them to return him to the House as their member.

Mr Purnell sat down amid loud applause. In answer to questions, he said he would not pledge himself to support the HallAtkinson Government. He had endeavoured to lay down certain principles, and would support that Government which would make the most honest endeavour to carry them out. He asked the district to return him as a thoroughly independent member. He wanted to see a thorough reconstruction of Government, and to see the Colony’s finances put on a sounder footing by the system of government being put in a simpler way. He was opposed to a Bank of Issue, and thought Government ought to contract rather than to expand its operations.' He was against the colonialisation of the education reserves because Canterbury and Otago would be great sufferers without benefiting the Colony. Mr J. A. Caygill, solicitor, was personally pleased to see Mr Parnell standing for the House. He hoped he would get in, for in these times of keen competition his absence for even a few months would leave a little more to be done in the profession in Ashburton by himself and others. Apart from that, Mr Purnell had delivered an able address, and he would move a vote of thanks to him for it. He attached no weight to votes of confidence. Mr Orr seconded.

Mr D, Thomas would test the feeling of the meeting by moving a vote of thanks to Mr Purnell, but with the addition that the meeting had no confidence in him at all. Mr Thomas spoke at some length, but amid bootings, bowlings, hisses, and applause. His motion was not seconded. A man called Vinton, at the back of the hall, then moved that the vote become one of confidence. This having been seconded, the motion of thanks and confidence was put to the meeting, 24 hands going up for it, while only nine were held up for the " thanks only ” motion. “ Thanks and confidence” wore therefore declared carried, and after the usual compliment to the chair the meeting dispersed.