HOW NEW ZEALAND IS VIEWED AT HOME.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXII, Issue 85, 12 April 1888, Page 4

HOW NEW ZEALAND IS VIEWED AT HOME.

(Otaffo Daily Timet.") A re-, resentative of this journal has h&d ao interview wi h Mr J. M. Ritchie, who has recently returned from the mother country, for the purpose of eliciting from him some , information respeofcine the manntr iv which New Zealand is regarded at Home a« to her oredit^hcr poli'io?, and her prospeofs. Without; further preface we will give the result of this interview, whioh was as follows :— Wilt you tell ua Mr RitoMe, something about toe reputation New Zealand hes at Home, and then go on from that ' to commercial matters, the frozen meat trade, nnd anything in that way ; and then you might tell us something about the state of English politios? HEW ZEALAND'S CBEDXT. I suppose the best thing to begin with is ■ by siying that unfortunately there iv a very dlsagreQ&tf c feeling nt Home about tbings in New Zealand, whioh I think may be summed up mainly in the idea that we cannot pny our way witb6ut. continual borrowing. That is to say paying interest out of loan 7 That we are simply paying int rrsb out of loan. Everybody firmly believes at Home that tbe position of New Zealand at present Is that we oannob pay our way without borrowing and paying interest) oat of loan. I bare heard that raid over and over *;-Vgain, and all I could say in reply to it • was that I had no doubt whatever that New Zealand could pay h«r way, but tba* I believed that bo long as the oapifcal account was not olo.*ed a great deal of our ordinary charges wou'd get mixed up with loan?, and the only way that we could coesibly arrive at a clearer understanding of our financial position wo s by bringing tboie loans to a **Btop for a timo. Would not the same position with regard to accounts bo inevitable in any commercial concern that was borrowing largely ? Just bo, if the commercial oonoern was not doing well. I know of suoh oasts at Home. For iuelauop, people say that the Caledonian railway of Scotland is doing ths same thing, tB the company is continually issuing debentures; hut that is more olearly indicated in New Zealand by ths constantly recurring: deficiencies in the Budget, and bec^us* of taxation never deore<sing but ra'hor increasing. These ideas, and especially anything that concerns our public finances and onr politics, are really theilhings whioh hay* more weight than anything el re. A great many people regnlate their opiniins by that alone; though there is a certain more limited oirole that have to do no mor« directly wUh New Zealand, in connection with companies that are not paying very well, land companies mining OQtnpaniep, and semi->priv&te commercial entf rprisep, and they know more than . that, for they fe«l the pinch in a different way, and know more ttun tbs gtneral public do. SlilJ, even th<so people btlievo it is >he publio finanoa and th« foxttion which go & long way to tender the enterprises in whi-ih they are more dtrrc.ly ooncerned to bo no unsuccessful as many of them h*va been. A\ Home the publio mainly fcrm an estimate of New Zealand from (be publio fioa»oe and the politics of the colony, and there is no doubt whatever that these h&vo got into very sad disrepute. Evrjoae speaks of it, and the personnel of the " late Government, for the reason that in inbluded certain members— there is no use mentioning names— caused that feeling t» , be accentuated very much indeed. Ido not know whether it would be well to say that I have heard men in high positions really asking the question seriously whether there was any chance of the interest on the public debt being paid regularly in future. I was asked that by more than one director of the Bank of England — whether I thought that ■ the interest on the loans was sure to be paid regularly. Of course I always replied to that that there was not the smallest chance of anything like repudiation, or the smallest chance of such payment not being met ; that I believed there were sufficient possibilities of retrenchment in the ordinary expenses of the Government and of the State to provide against the possibility of any suoh thing as that, apart altogether from the question of additional taxation, if only the people could be brought to face it, and to submit to the inconvenience and to certain disadvantages which must accrue for a time from a thorough reorganisation ©f their expenditure. Did you find that this bad opinion of Now Zealand went beyond the business people, and was held in general in such a way as to interfere with settlers coming out here t Ohy yes ; everywhere I found it. Alike among city men and in the oountry. Far .instanoe, a lady who knew no more about New Zealand than she did about Patagonia, remarked, "Oh, that is the country where you have a very good climate, but where you have a tremendous amount of debt and taxation." Then again up in the Highlands of Scotland I have' heard the very same remark by men who are mixing among the farmers, and from the farmers themselves. And the result of that necessarily must be to prevent settlers of the class we want ooming here? Practically drying up emigration to this colony. Every new field for emigration iB canvassed and talked about before people bf gin to think of New Zealand. Of course the distance New Zealand is from tbe Home oountry - is against it, and also the cost of coming here, -but apart from that people seem to have an extraordinary distrust at present of ooming to this colony, simply because they think they would be little better here than they are in the old oountry in consequence of the high taxation and the very depresses! state of things generally. I suppose the distrust of New Zealand is largely due to the effect of " Oceana " and the attacks of the Standard ? Fronde's book .did a world of harm ; everybody spoke of it, and spoke of it in cone neotion with New Zealand, and bo doubt it has done a great deal of harm to the colony. As far as the Standard is concerned it has been very persistent in writing us down, but I do not think that it has been really unjust. I do not know^ whether really there has not been some fair foundation for moit that the ■Standard has said, ao far as 1 have been able to judge. Then again the publio at Home do not seem to understand the extraordinary amount of subsidiary publio borrowing by local bodies and harbour boards, and the question of harbours is a mystery to every. one. They cannot possibly understand how a colony with the area of Great Britain a*d Ireland, with only 600,000 people in it, cap possibly went huge harhour works at so many different points all over the colony, and the general impression is that these works must burden the country very much, and that Ihe General Government must sooner or later father them, beoause it cannot let them be repudiated, and if sot taken over by the Government they must come to grief, and taking them over simply means so much additional burden to the whole colony. Do you think that the stoppage of borrowing, a real policy of winding up borrowing, when the news of it spread would favourably affect our general standing? Yes, very much indeed. I was told in London that the Canadian Government were about formally to notify that they in • tended to close their borrowing and in future to do whatever was necessary out of their own resources, and that the effect of that was at once very marked upon Canadian stocks, which had gone up very high. It is not perhaps so much that there is danger of our not being able to pay interest, but the continual borrowing every few years has the effect of unsettling the market for stocks, and people do not care to invest in thorn • because of the fluctuation and uncertainty as to what may occur. How were the loan proposals of the present Government regarded? Well, I think there was great disappointment that the colony seemed to require so much. At one time I know a great many people looked upon it as only a loan for a million, and then when it came out that there was a previous loan of a million for the Auokland- Wellington railway which had to be floated along with it, and that the loan really amounted to two millions, I think that it. had a very unpleasant effect and caused a good deal of hesitation in high ; circles. Of course it is well known at Home that there has not been, a large increase of population from outside, and that there is a rery large quantity of land for sale in settled districts, possibly at too. high prices, In consequence of the holders of it not being able to takelejss; but still there the land Is for' eale, and at Home they .' cannot understand under Buch circumstances what is the need for additional railW»yß, . and this is more perplexing because the inorease of railways of lat o has only in-

creased the oharge for deficiency against the consolidated revenue. The people at Home see that the increase in railways simply amounts to an increase against the consolidated revenue of tha colony for the defioienoy in railway revenue ; and of c»urse so long as they see no other explanation of that, and new railways are demanded, it is alrao3t icbpossible for tbem to come to any other conclusion than that it is simply the expenditure of the money that is wanted, and that the railways themselves are really not a necessity. The Midland railway, too, has had a bad effeot at Home. I was told that there was" great difficulty in raising money for the works, and that it was being hawked about to a considerable extent in the same way aa the Port Chalmers dook loan aud some mining ventures, which were hawked about in London in all sorts of quarters that nobody ever heard oi before, and whioh were entirely outside the first -olaBS and legitimate channels of negotiating suoh operations. There is a feeling at Home that our education costs ua too muoh. No doubt the late change of Ministry had a very good effeot, partly because of the better reputation of the Prime Minister and partly because everybody saw that the Government had come into existence upon a queßtien of retrenchment, and therefore were likely to be forced into carrying it out ; but at the same time it will not have a lasting effect unless it is found that the Government oan balanoo their budget properly and show clearly that the ordinary revenue of the colony is sufficient to meet the ordinary annual expenditure. OUB BKSOUROES AMD PROSPECTS, Oan you Bay whether the people at Home have taken notice of the enormous extent of the productive power of this colony ? Yes, a groat many people have over and over again expressed very great regret that the colony should have allowed itself to get the reputation of being so over-burdened, because there ia a universal feeling that there are better possibilities in view in the future for New Zealand than for any of the colonies The extraordinary productiveness of this I colony is known at home, and it is known that whereas every one of the other colonies import largely of food aupplits of all kinds, New Zealand practically does not import any at all, and exports very largely, having her best market in Australia. Do you think that thtfaoi that the progress in wheat production has been greater in New Zealand than in any of ths Australian colonies is kaowo at Home? Ido not knoir that it is. I think it would be a good thing if that was circulated more. At Home there is no doubt of the fact that New Zealand is extraordinarily pioduotive. That ia known. But not the faofc that it has been growing in productiveness daring this period of depression ? No, Ido not think it is known. It would be a very good thing if thatj. could be publiohed at Homo as widely as possible, because everybody reoognises that a country that oan pro« duce so richly must come right in th« cad, and of course that was the argument that I chiefly relied upon when talking about the colony— that I could not see how she could fail to come right in the end, and that probably the heavy burdens the colony wai now bearing were a good deal due to the unduly inflated belief in the country postesaed by its inhabitants whioh had caused them to overdo things for a time. I think it would be a very good thing if that could be sent Home to some place where it would be widely published. Supposing we have a protective tariff next session, what effect would that have upon the credit of the colony T Well, Ido not know. I have never discussed that. England is a Freetrade oountry, and people there do not understand this circumscribing of bo many colonies by protective tariffs. Even Freetraders cam understand something in the way of f eder-« ation of a number of colonies producing muoh the same, and protection against some other place ; but when I mentioned to people at Home that in travelling from Melbourne to Sydney there was sis much trouble with the baggage as when travelling between Italy and France, they were astonished. They thought it the most extraordinary thing possible that five or six colonies with a total population of something like 3,000,000 should want to put a wall round each to protect themselves from each other. The idea it seemed to convey to most people at Home was that it was so absurd as to lead very quickly to the exposure of the absurdity, aud this would be the simplest way of proving the evils of Protection. But you think that the question of Free* trade and Protection does not enter into the matter of the credit of the colony 1 No ; I do not think it does at all. It is recognised at Home that these new countries will probably sooner or later have an experiment with Protection, and it is also recog* nised that they must, if they all attempt it, feel the deleterious effects of it very quickly, because the area is so Bmall. Do you think the Government can do any« thing more to make known the resources of the colony and the prospects that exist here for the investment of capital ? I do not think so. I think the only thing they can do is to set to work to arrange the public affairs of the colony in Buch a way that people at Home may begin to talk and say "Well, New Zealand is coming right ; New Zealand is paying her way ; New Zealand ia going to stop this reckless spending of money, and is as good as any of the other colonies. "