THE NELSON EXAMINER. Nelson, August 3, 1844.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 126, 3 August 1844, Page 85

THE NELSON EXAMINER. Nelson, August 3, 1844.

" Journals become more necessary as men become more equal, and individualism more to be feared. It would be to underrate their importance to suppose that they serve only to secure liberty : they maintain civilisation. Dk TocatJßviLL*. ~ Of Democracy in America, vol. 4, p. 309.

Circumstances, -which it is needless to explain, have again rendered necessary a change in the editorial management of this paper. The present Editor — deeming professions and promises somewhat idle in a case where performance one way or the other so soon speaks for itself, and aware of the proverbial destination of good intentions — is inclined to say nothing about them, but to content himself with merely requesting of his readers on all occasions a fair heariug and liberal construction. To all, the columns of the paper are open : — let the honest advocacy and ever increasing and more intimate knowledge of the right and the true be the sole desire and aim alike of editor, readers and contributors !

Of all the late measures of the Local Government, the Debenture Bill is the most important, and demands therefore the most serious attention. The circulating medium is the life-blood of the body politic, and its derangement affects the health of the whole system. Laying aside all prejudice for or against the authors of the measure, let us endeavour to look at it closely and calmly, and see to what conclusion respecting it the naked facts and common sense of the case inevitably drive us. Government owes say £15,000. To get rid of this-debt, it issues promissory notes payable at two years, with five per cent, interest. It then declares them a legal tender.

Now, of course, if these notes were to suffer no depreciation, no injustice 'would be committed, and could the- holder*, as in

the case of exchequer bills (of which these debentures' are Lilliputian imitations), be secure of receiving their money on application at the Treasury the moment they become due, perhaps no great cause of complaint would exist. But will they suffer no depreciation ? To this question we need only reply, that they are depreciated already. Like poor Tristram Shandy, when only an homunculus, their misfortunes have commenced even before they are born. Already the bankers refuse to discount a bill except on the condition that it shall not be paid in debentures. The merchants in consequence resolve to take off the per centage J&ey deem equivalent to the loss they undergo from holding such unnegotiable documents.

The value of Government securities, say the defenders of Government in reply, corresponds to the degree of public faith in the ability and willingness of Government to redeem its pledges. If, then, the public withholds this faith without good cause, the public is to blame — no charge of injustice can be made good against the Government. The banks, having the power of deciding~on the degree of confidence to be put in Government securities, are the cause of the injustice if they wrongfully destroy the confidence of the public in these securities. Let us see, then, if the banks are justified or not in their present course. Lord Stanley, it appears, authorized the issue of debentures to the amount of £15,000, in a particular case and for a specified purpose, namely, the liquidation of three drafts of £5,000 each, drawn by Captain Hobson and held by Mr. Wray. Is the Home Government likely to sanction the application of this power to another object ? Sir George Grey, whose wise and vigorous proceedings have so greatly reduced the expenditure of South Australia and restored the colony to prosperity, drew bills for general purposes to the amount of £30,000. These were dishonoured by the Home Government. He then drew separate bills to the amount of the salaries of his officials, which were also dishonoured. Yet we know how infinitely more important the colony of South Australia is in the eyes of the Home Government than that of New Zealand. Further, that the system of unsparing retrenchment adopted by Governor Grey is the very reverse of that adopted by Captain Fitzßoy. With a knowledge of these facts, can it be supposed the debentures of the latter will meet with a more favourable reception than the bills of the former ? And if the Home Government refuse to honour them, it is certain the Local Government cannot discharge them. Its expenditure is at present £3*6,000, its revenue about £20,000; so that, before they become due, its debt will be tripled. Is there not, then, a strong probability that the debentures will never be redeemed ? And would not the banks be neglecting their duty to the public were they to accept securities so doubtful at their full nominal value ?

But, urge the advocates of these antipodean " assignats," the Government need not be driven to redeem them, even when due, with actual money ; it can take them back again for customs, taxes, &c, which in one year amount to more than the sum tb« debentures are issued for; it simply anticipates a year's revenue of the colony, and this, as it falls in, gradually lio^oidater the debentures. Let us consider this <v little.

The debentures are paid to Government officers to ' the amount of their salaries ; with them these gentlemen pay the bills of their butchers, bakers, and tailors, and the servants and mechanics they employ ; the baker and butcher give them, for flour and cattle, to farmers and graziers ; and all to the storekeepers, for tea, sugar, clothing, and other imported articles ; the storekeepers hand them over to the merchants, to pay for the goods they have bought wholesale and retailed to their before-mentioned customers. The merchant, constantly receiving supplies from abroad, pays them to the Custom House for duties. So they return to Government, which takes them at their full value, and nobody is the worse, while trade has been kept alive and a circulating medium supplied. Thus argue the philo-debenturists.

But to examine now this comfortablyarranged and beautiful-looking theory of circulation. The public pays to Government, say £20,000 a year or £5,000 a quarter, and £15,000 of debentures are meantime in circulation. So in the first three months £10,000 of debentures over what will be paid to the Government in customs, &c, is in the hands of the public ; in the second three months £5,000 surplus. Who is to hold this surplus ? In the due course of their circulation as described above, we suppose they would come into the hands of the merchants. These last would wish to remit them to Sydney or elsewhere, to pay for the goods they have imported ; "but they will not" be received out of the country, of course. The banks, too, refuse to take them except at a ruinous discount. They must therefore lie dead and idle in the strong boxes of the merchants. Even were their redemption by the Government when due absolutely certain,, would the merchants be likely to take them under such losing circumstances, except at a reduced rate ?

We have thus put the case in the most favourable way for the debenture scheme ; and taken it for granted all along that when paid in customs and taxes, the Government will cancel them at once. But the power of doing so supposes in the Government a Treasury with something else in it, or how js it to meet its constantly accruing liabilities — the salaries of its servants — all its expenses ? But the Government Treasury is a notorious vacuum — every day (did it not smack of Hibernicism so to speak) increasing in intensity of emptiness. The debentures then must be reissued and re-re-issued, like self-sown crops, less and less valuable every time they appear ; and not even, with the luck of the Sybilline leaves, in smaller and smaller numbers. On the contrary, having persuaded the public to endure them once, will not the pauper Government be induced to try the experiment on a greater scale ? Are the public or the banks then to blame ? Nay, can they help this depreciation ? — And is the ease with which such rude and primitive hand-bills might be forged an item too unimportant to be mentioned in enumerating the rational causes of their diminution in value in the opinion of the public ?

Well, then, all this is undeniable, and the Government itself seems aware of it. What step does it take to remedy it ? Prepare to be lost in admiration of the profundity of its wisdom, the fertility of its resources, its reckless audacity. The whole power of the Crown over these colonies is derived from Parliament. This the Crovra always acknowledges, as the slightest reference to the charter, letters patent, instructions of the Crown to the Governor, will prove. Parliament has not given the Crown any such general power over the currency as that of making its securities at will legal tenders. And what the Crown never had, no Minisr ter of the Crown can delegate. Moreover, the Crown, in the general instructions for the government of this colony given to Captain Hobson, expressly forbids this particular excercise of authority :—

" And we do further direct that you do not propose or awent to any ordinance whatever

whereby bills of credit" or other negotiable securities, of whatever nature, may be issued in lieu of money on the credit of the said colony, or whereby any government paper currency may be established therein, or whereby any such bills, or any other paper currency, or any coin, save only the legal coin of the realm, may be made or declared to be a legal tender, without special permission from us in that behalf first obtained."

Nevertheless, our bold Governor assumes this power, resident in Parliament alone ; and declares his hand-bills legal tenders. He lets no antiquated notions of respect for Parliamentary authority or special orders stand in his way for a moment ; but, like Jack Cade, exclaims with oracular brevity, " I have thought upon it, it shall be so. Away, burn all the records of the realm ; my mouth shall be the Parliament of England," And, unfortunately, his official councillors are as ready to take advantage of the Governor's usurpation of power as Dick in the same play, and cry with chuckling eagerness " My lord, when shall We go to Cheapside and take up commodities upon our bills V "Marry, presently," responds the chief ; here, perhaps, reckoning without his host.

But, leaving the question of the power of the Government to make their bills a legal tender, let us inquire as to the justice and efficiency of the step. As far as regards future transactions, the results are .evident. The bills having become depreciated in spite of this attempt to bolster them up, no credit will be given either for goods or money, without a stipulation that payment shall not be made in debentures, or that they shall only be received in payment at their actual value in the money-market. So that, in all future transactions, the effect of this measure is utterly nothing at all. Its defenders assert that Government was bound to give all the value to its securities that lay in its power. True, but, as the value of a security or pledge depends upon the opinion those to whom it is given have of the probability of its being redeemed, nothing will add value to such security which does not raise or confirm that opinion. So that, if our sapient legislators were determined by enactments to give value to their securities, they might as well have begun with the basis on which that value must depend. Then we should have had " a Bill for the Creation of Confidence in Government," or some honourable member would have risen to move for " a statistical return of all the Reasons for suspecting the Solvency of Government," with the view of introducing a clause to inflict a fine on any in whose possession they might be found. And another might have moved, as an amendment, the adoption of a sliding scale of penalties, by which the fines or duration of imprisonment might be made to increase with the cogency of arguments employed and the strength of doubts entertained, with a mitigated penalty, perhaps, for the first act of reflection, to be doubled on any repetition of the offence. We recommend this course to the serious attention of Government.

But, as to past transactions, the effect' is monstrous. All debts are to be paid nominally in full ; really with a loss to the creditor of twenty-five, or thirty, or fifty per cent., as the case may be. He has no legal remedy ; his debtor robs him to that amount with impunity. Every one who owes more than is owed to him, has a bonus given him. Every one who is owed more than he owes, is robbed of the surplus. No doubt the latter will be content to be sacrificed for the good of the former. Unfortunate victims of legislative wisdom ! How to comfort you we know not, except by reminding you that, as Government officials are probably on the debtor side of the books of all of you, we have the Governor's own assurance that these gentlemen " have a delicate sense of honour, 9 ' and of course will not take advantage of the opportunity offered them of getting rid of their creditors by paying only a fractional part of their debts.

But, urge these pertinacious bill-men, the debt of the Government is the debt of the public. If the Government cannot pay, the public ought — at least they must, anare the burden between then** Now, were it «o, it it hard to find the justice of throwing the

public's share of the burdfen wholly on the | shoulders of that part of the public which is owed more than it owes ; that is to say, probably on the most respectable and industrious portion alone. But, though this notion would have a certain degree of truth when applied to a country like England, where the Government is representative — at least the best representation of a representative Government hitherto known — and where, -in consequence, the public may be said to have incurred the Government debt and to have spent the money, it is entirely beside the mark in. a colony like this. Is not our Government a perfect despotism ? Have we a voice in any of its proceedings ? Are we authors of, or in any way answerable? for, any one of its acts 1 Nay, did we even receive the benefit of the expenditure by which it has run itself into debt ? Has not its financial career been ever an oscillation between the wildest prodigality towards it* servants and favourites and the most pinching parsimony towards the public at large ? Thousands lavished on Clendon jobs and Government-house kitchens ; three-and-sixpences and eighteen-pences post after post refused, returned for revisal, remitted, disallowed, for coffee pots and hand-cuffs ; the most trifling charges for articles required by its own statutes, and absolutely necessary to the effectual establishment of any police, any protection for the lives and properties of the public ? Are not these fair samples, the most obvious illustrations of our Government's mismanagement of its funds ? We say nothing of useless and unwise expenditure in protectorships, and other unnecessary offices, the burden of which, however*, 7 we, the public, ought to have nothing to do with.

We cannot bat consider then that^the making these bills a legal tender is as unconstitutional as unjust ; as politically unwise as morally wrong. To the amount of the depreciation of the notes, it is a robbery of the public. To 'that amount it is a virtual repudiation by the Government of its debts. It h an imitation, on a small scale and with less boldness, of American injustice, and Governor Fitzßoy is trotting at the heels of the " drab-celoured " gentlemen of Pennsylvania, non passibus cequis. We have devoted our paper of this week almost exclusively to the publication of the debates in the Legislative Council, and by adopting a similar course next week, "we shall be able to give all we have received,* which come down to the 2d July. As these debates are mostly on measures which must one way or the other operate strongly on the future welfare of the colony, we makV no apology for allowing them to occupy so much of our space. The carcase of a large whale was stranded on the Boulder Bank a few days since, about three miles from the entrance to the har-, bour. As the head was wanting, it is supposed to have drifted from some whaling station. The settlers north of the town have been busy, we understand, in supplying themselves with a stock of oil from the blubber. The Flour Mill Company has decided on. erecting its mill on an acre adjoining the Maitai and the Eel Pond. After a careful examination of all the streams in the neighbourhood of the town, this has been selected as the mo3t fitting site. Contracts have been taken for the works, which will be commenced immediately. A second mill is also to be erected on the" Waiiti, about a mile above the Waimea Village, by a company of labouring men. This will be a great convenience to the numerous small cultivators in that district.

Religious Quarrels.— The Rev. H. Hanson Turton, a Wesleyan minister, has addressed three letters to the Bishop of New Zealand on the conduct of some of his clergy, who have sought to alienate the minds of the nativeß from the ministers of that creed, and thereby sow the seed of religious dissension. The letters have been published in the Southern Cross, and the editor, speaking of one of them, observes, " there is such a strong current of candour, honesty, and Christian feeling running through the letter, that we are not only irresistibly compelled to believe every word of it, but even to shudder with a fearful foreboding at the evils and calamities which religious intolerance and bigotry will entail on the aborigines." Municipal Corporation Bill. — From the debates in Council on Tuesday last, we are happy to perceive that it is not the intention of his Excellency the Governor to compel the people to accept of the Corporation against their own wishes, and without any lands to derive a revenue from. * * • • • It will not, however, come kilo operation till approved of at hornet and the Governor has pledged himself not to declare any settlement a borough unless the people desire it, and unktt they see that from bmd» that may be granted to them, it would be to their advantage to be incorporated. —Southern Cross, June 29,