The Manawatu Standard PUBLISHED DAILY. Survant la verites WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1883. OUR AGENT-GENERAL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume 3, Issue 51, 24 January 1883, Page 2

Manawatu Standard PUBLISHED DAILY. Survant la verites WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1883. OUR AGENT-GENERAL.

The Post publishes as a supplement; the tull text'of'the ableah'd very inter-; eating paper read before the Royal Colonial Institute by the Agent-General for Nr w Zealand, Sir Francis Dillon! Bell, K^KG^nT^TKe Public De6t of Australasia." The address is most' exhaustive, and deals with' dry facts and still drier figures m a fashion that serves tOiConyey a vast amount, ok information, while at* the *B<ime time poss ssing the merit of being; entertains ing reading. The public debt of A us* tralasia is set down at ninety-six millions, audthe population at nearly three millions, of which more than a million have been added within the tast ten years. The author points out that m 1860 the debt of Australasia was only ten millions, so that eighty-six millions ot indebtedness has been added within the last twenty years. The question at issue then is : With such a great and sudden growth of debt m so short a time,- has the pr^g're^s,;Qf>Aij^tralaßia been equal to the growth of her debt ? Our Agent General affir<ns that it has been greater m many ways. He shows that out of the ninety-six millions borrowed'£ we hafe sppjit mojtf than ,\fifty« six millions on railways, twenty millions on other public .w*>rk£, v and nearly ten millions'on' immigration^ He proves by statistics that our railways (that is those of Ausjiralasia — not New Zealand alone), are even now yielding a net return all Jb.ut equal to the interest on the money we borrowed to make them j that the telegraph yields, mpch jmpre, than, thd interest on trie 1 capital' investe'djaad immigration m a still higher propoition, since every immigrant immediately begins to pay each year a contribution to the revenue equul to a third of his passage-money. Deducting the seventy millions for the above three incomeearning items, there is not much more than twenty»six millions left as the debt on wjhich 'the/ interest- \|s not Actually earned ' "even now, fc ~i't is""' facts and statistics like the above, to which we will make further reference on a subsequent, occasion, .which has placed the financial -position pf Australasia m, aso much wore favorable light m the eyes of Home capitalists, and which contributed so essentially. to. th.e r successful floatiug of our recent Loan, which consummation we maintain is due more to our A gent- General's inco'ntrovertible v facts and" figures ' \han' almost any other circumstance o» instrumentality. In these days of much borrowititfj plain", simplefact's tell mofe atronsly than the glowing platitudes and rounded sentences that remind one of the -painty but transient days of the Yogel regime.