A STATE BANK.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIII, Issue 10600, 8 March 1895, Page 3

A STATE BANK.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib, —It is next to impossible for the few wealth-producers (perhaps not mors than 20,000) to earn the money necessary to pay the interest on all our loans (colonial, municipal and harbour, &c.), and support themselves and all the uonproducers as well. If the United States of America were able to carry on a great war by paper money, and add largely to their wealth and population thereby.

surely this colony would be ten times more prosperous than America was, if our Government issued paper money, and spent it in reproductive works, giving employment to all who desired to add to the wealth of tho colony. For every £1 issued the Government would get £1 iu value, either in mines’o_ gold, farmer’s grain, squatter’s wool, or in work. Could not the Government make a start in paying their police, Civil servants, and railway workpeople, &c., with their own notes instead of by tho notes of private banks ? I think moat people would prefer Government notes to those of any proprietary banks.—l am, &c., F. A.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—lu your leading article on the subject of the meeting held in the Square last Saturday night, you seem to have rather ’misunderstood my position regarding bimetallism. _ There is nothing antagonistic between it and a State bank. One would be quite consistent in advocating both; in no degree is it & question of bimetallism v. State bank. A State bank could bo formed on a bimetallic basis just as well »a on a gold one. Under present circumstances I am in favour of bimetallism rather than monometallism, but I think that to have a purs system you must do away with metallism altogether. Where I am against the advocates of bimetallism is in what they claim it will do, or rather in all they claim it will do. I think it will only do one thing, viz., relieve to some extant the evils caused by what ia called the appreciation of gold. But there are a hundred evils caused by our monetary system which it cannot even touch. You enumerate a list of things that tho advocates of a State bank want, and say that we might as well cry for tho moon as expect to get all those things. As regards the moon, we have already got it as far as it is posable to get it; so that crying for more would ba labour m vain. Bob ao regards the other, we have not by any means got as much as is possible, and it is only by crying for more that we can get it.—l am, &0., *D. NALERIA.