The Lyttelton Times. MONDAY, JULY 15, 1895. THE COLONIAL TREASURER’S DEFENCE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIV, Issue 10705, 15 July 1895, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. MONDAY, JULY 15, 1895. THE COLONIAL TREASURER’S DEFENCE.

The explanation made by Mr Ward in the House of Representatives on Friday night evidently took the members of the Opposition by surprise. Their speeches show that they were quite unprepared for the line of defence developed by the Treasurer. The financial arrangements detailed by Mr Ward were simply precautionary measures taken by him a year ago. Knowing the intense uneasiness that was felt in London with regard to colonial public finance he adopted special safeguards. He deposited in London an exceptional amount of debentures, drafts and cash to be employed in case of a financial crisis which might he disastrous to the credit of the colony. The Opposition speakers, of course, challenged the Treasurer’s right to send these securities to London at all. They declared that the securities, and in particular the consolidated stock debentures, were not the property of the Government, and ought not to have been sent away for any purpose whatever. The quibble upon which Mr Ward’s critics rely is the confusion of the Treasury Department with the Government of New Zealand. They, choose to argue that all moneys which belong to other departments than the Treasury are not unpledged securities which the Government has a right to use for the purpose the credit of the colony in case of emergency. It is needless to say that this straining of language is not likely to find favour with the public. The embittered and envenomed attacks made upon the Treasurer during his absence were baaed upon the assumption that the securities which Mr Ward told the Chamber of Commerce ware in London, were not in Loudon at all. Mr Ward triumphantly showed, however, that the sum we specified on Saturday—.£3,o77,2l5 —was actually available in the way he mentioned, with the exception of one amount of £105,000, which was in transit, and might, of course, have been anticipated. This practically disposed of the matter so far as the Treasurer was concerned, but only opened the way for the defence of the Agent-General’s circular. Themain charges made against Sir Westby Perceval by Sir Robert Stout were, first, that the Agent-General had misrepresented the nature of the New Zealand landed property which was to he security for the loans made under the Advances to Settlers Act; and second, that he had overstated the earnings of the Government railways. The answer to the first charge was crushing. It showedtbat the words of the circular specially complained of were quoted from the Act itself. They are to be found in Sub-section 5 of Clause 41, which defines the property upon which advances under the Act may he made. With regard to the railways, the Agept-Geaersil was maUgiiedlpr

ing that they are earning 3 per cent on their cost. Sir Robert Stout went so far as to make the preposterous contention that the unopened, incomplete and unworked fragments of lines now under construction ought to be included when calculating the cost of our working railways. This, we need hardly say, was ridiculed by every unbiassed critic, and it was clearly shown from the official returns laid upon the table of the House last session that the earnings of the railways, including the* services rendered to the Government, were equal to. 368 per cent upon the cost of construction. As for the poor attempts to traduce Sir Westby Perceval for having adopted the official estimate of recent surpluses, we can only say that it has been our duty to so often expose the very hollow and ungenerous attempts to whittle away our surplus that we are sure our readers will not wish us to go over this beaten track again. We may, however, point out that the investors who subscribed to our three per cent loan might easily have verified the Agent-General’s statements, and the fact that they still refuse to be alarmed by the unpatriotic skriekings of Sir Robert Stout, Mr Dutfiie and the rest of the Opposition financiers, is the best evidence we could have of their intimate acquaintance with colonial finance. Taken as a whole, .Mr Ward’s defence was complete and overwhelming, and should make some of his critics thoroughly ashamed of their premature and bitter attacks upon his recent services to the colony.