The Lyttelton Times. THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 1894.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXXI, Issue 10308, 29 March 1894, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 1894.

In a few pithy pages of the Contemporary Revieiv, which, have the supreme merit of being clearly and trenchantly written, Mr Norwood Young, a gentleman well known in Christchurch and Wellington, remorselessly exposes the wild ignorance of some of oar English critics. He devotes particular attention to the reckless, almost ferocious attacks of the Investors* Review, and very properly follows the editor of that Journal on to his own ground. The assailant of the colonies has dealt in figures, and founded his attacks on statistics; the defender pursues him into the region of arithmetic and convicts him of serious blunders, both in addition and subtraction. Mr Wilson, consumed by his desire to prove that Australasia consists of insolvent colonies, puffed up with a pretentious prosperity, based on an extravagant waste .oftjbdtigh, iaoxioy r di^oo»ss.:<s

all hopeful estimates of colonial revenue in a very simple manner. He lays it down that colonial imports are bought with borrowed money j that as borrowing ceases imports collapse ; that revenue is gained from tariff duties; that with the collapse of imports revenue disappears. By way of reply to this ingenious syllogism Mr Young quotes the revenue figures of New Zealand. In 1887 this colony’s loan expenditure was over a million and a half. In 1892 it was less than half a million. But the imports rose between these years from sis millions and a quarter to nearly seven millions, and the Customs revenue grew by some *8850,000. The Treasury, instead of being bankrupt, had a handsome surplus. How was this managed ? A plain answer is supplied by the table of the colony’s exports. The exports rose during the same period from something over six millions to something over nine millions and a half. What, then, caused the increase in exports P Simply this: the land under cultivation rose from seven and a quarter millions of acres in 1887 to nine and a half millions of acres in 1892. Such figures are unanswerable, and it is amazing that Mr Wilson should have ventured to ignore them. Probably he would not have dared to do so had not the victims of his libels been at the antipodes. It is, of course, true that a sudden cessation of borrowing must reduce imports and so lessen the revenue. But even that applies more to the stopping of private borrowing than to the stopping of public borrowing. And the decline is, after all, .only a fleeting shadow. The expenditure of loan moneys must always develop the resources and stimulate the productiveness of a colony. The process may be overdone ; it may embarrass taxpayers and ruin individual borrowers; but the general effect is sure to follow. It has followed in New Zealand, and will follow in Australia. Mr Young is not justified, by the way, in assuming that our present sound position is entirely duo to a repentant and reformed nation turning from the spending of public money to the cultivation of the soil. The cultivation of the soil is not a new art undiscovered by our people until they found they could borrow no more. It has been going on since the earliest days of settlement, and the muchabused borrowing policy largely assisted its extension. But we are not disposed to find fault with our zealous champion. Almost always he uses as arguments unimpeachable figures and facta. These enable him to show that the average Australasian is not only the wealthiest, best educated and longest-lived man in the world, but that he is also the thriftiest, inasmuch as he saves the most, and the most enlightened, inasmuch as he spends the most on education. Though his hours of work are the shortest he produces more wool, more corn, more gold, more silver and more coal than any other toiler in the world. Therefore ho has the right to consume, as he does, more meat, more sugar and more tea. If his public expenditure is high, his public revenue is proportionate. Weil may Mr Young say that in face of these facts it matters comparatively little that the Australasian is saddled with a largo debt. Debt has to be compared with wealth, and taxation with earnings. At least, the Australasian taxpayer does not, like his British brother, throw a third of his tribute into the oink of military and naval expenditure. This alone should make his critics hesitate before talking and writing of him as an insolvent spendthrift. They should remember, too, that if Australasia has been ready to borrow, it has been because England has been ready to lend. “By his intense eagerness to lend, and subsequent frantic demand for all his money back at an hour’s notice, the British money-lender has,” to quota Mr Young’s summary of the position, “brought upo£ Australia the severest financial crisis on record in modem times. Yet there is solid ground for the belief that Australia is, at present, the moat prosperous country in the world.”