Topics of the the Month. THE FINANCIAL POSITION. "Nelson Examiner," July 15.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 28, 5 August 1871, Page 3

Topics of th e the Month. THE FINANCIAL POSITION. " Nelson Examiner," July 15.

The scheme of gigantic borrowing propounded by the Colonial Treasurer last session, demands that those who have a permanent stake in the country shall narrowly watch each action of the Government and Legislature in connection with it. We say advisedly those who have a permanent stake in the country — those who, for themselves and their families, have staked their all in the colony. We do not refer to the " flying squadron" of mere speculators, whose views, it has been suggested, Mr. Yogel probably represents with great accuracy ; for whom no amount of borrowing would be too excessive, no expenditure too profuse, if only it might be achieved while they were here. Is not theirs the watchword, already recorded in Hansard : "We want money, and plenty of it, and soon ?" Not for those do we write ; nor, indeed, do we believe that for them would any writing avail. But we willingly believe that the bulk of the people of New Zealand — the real settlers in the land, who with anxious thought and hard toil, ore struggling as best they may, individually and collectively, to secure for themselves and their offspring a prosperous and stable future — are soberminded enough to refuse to be dazzled by the gambling element of the Bcheme, infectious though it be ; are too cautious — old-fashioned it may be termed —to, as was happily put by Mr. Gillies, "go in for unlimited loo." They, the men who want not to run away, and could not if they would, but who will have to stand and bear all the liabilities which the scheme entails, recognize clearly enough the manifold permanent evils which may flow from it, and will surely call their representatives strictly to account if these evils are not guarded against. The attitude of the constituencies during the late elections, and especially bo in the South, is indicative of the attention with which the scheme is regarded, and of the corresponding watchfulness which will attend the action of members. That for their action with reference to the scheme, and to the financial condition of the country generally, the recently elected members of the Legislature will be, and will be held, responsible, there is not a shadow of a doubt. Nor can the present House attempt to absolve itself from such responsibility. If no other good was effected last session by the independent members, who while not opposing the scheme altogether, indeed accepting the idea upon which it was based with more or less of agreement, yet were not prepared to accept it in the shape in which it was presented by the Colonial Treasurer, one great good they did accomplish, in restricting any expenditure which might be incurred in connection with it to such sums only as might he authorized by Parliament from session to session. By refusing last session to swallow the pill whole, they have given to the Legislature the power of preventing any expenditure not warranted by the means or necessities of the country — even although the so preventing it, might be termed by Mr. Fitzherberfc, an unnatural interference with the progress of "natural development !" As yet, the public works authorized by the late Parliament are such as legitimately accord with the requirements of the country and are fairly within its means, but a duty of no ordinary difficulty, requiring the exercise of much judgment, vigilance, and conscientiousness properly to fulfil it, is imposed on members in sessions to come. They have to discriminate betweeu the many proposals for railways and other works, here, there, and everywhere, which will, there can be little doubt, be preferred with a hungry clamour as the necessary corollary of the invitation to a general scramble which Mr. Yogel has so freely given. We do not indeed envy him the position, or as we suppose we must, if for form sake, add that of his colleagues. Dictator though he may ke, and ■willing instruments as bis colleagues have shown themselves, they are still in a constitutional sense responsible. The unfortunate mother who, to save her life, threw one after another her children to the wolves to appeasetheir ravening,illustrates the position. Happy he, if ouly he may save himself by like sacrifices. Even last session he was almost rent by the monster he had himself created, against whose fierce as-

saults he had to turn for aid to the previously despised Opposition. Wairarapa, Wanganui, Hawke's Bay, and Taranaki, had actually hold of his very skirts, and retreated growling with a fragment of the torn gasment. A stormy session is surely awaiting the present Ministry, destitute as they are too of assured support, and for the most part but faintly believing either in their scheme or in themselves. They will, as our American friends express it, have many "a bad quarter of an hour." Nor can the Ministry who may succeed them hope to avoid altogether the lions in the path. They, having once tasted blood, will not be easily choked off. No one result of the scheme is so certain, as that the shape in which it has been pre- , sented, a mongrel cross between General and Provincial authorities and requirements, with no defined responsibility on either, or any one, will revive and intensify that selfish jealousy of each separate district, already the bane of the colony. No work proposed to be undertaken in any place, however much it may be justified, or may tend to advance New Zealand as a whole, can hope to pass unchallenged, unless at the same time each petty locality gets something. How can a continuing party be formed, when its individual members may be expected to represent so much separate greediness ? By what ties caa such a party, if formed, be held together , in the teeth of the conflicting demands of the districts with which they are connected ? Will not a gigantic system of log-rolling make party and Government equally impossible ? Yet this condition of things is what those members who would preserve New Zealand from ruin have earnestly to face, with more or less of hope that some fair measure of success may cheer their labours. Not to hope so, would be to despair of the colony. Nor will their exertions be confined to watching the Public Works and Immigration scheme, and the raising and spending of borrowed money; the whole financial position of the colony requires the most earnest attention. With an ordinary revenue decreasing at the rate of upwards of £100,000 a-year ; with the revenue from land sales almost nil — a sure test of the condition of the inhabitants — the present Ministry is spending on ordinary purposes of Government sums far exceeding the ordinary revenue, at a rate such as no Government the colony has before had ever dared to venture on. Under the provisions of the Land Transfer Act alone, it is commonly believed that an additional expenditure at the rate of some £25,000 a-year has been incurred in the last few months. For the particulars of this latter expenditure the Legislature is not responsible, as the salaries of the respective officers — and they are by no means small in amount — were never submitted to the House of Eepresentatives, but are fixed as the Government might direct. In like manner the control of the salaries of all employed under the colour of Public Works and Immigration, and of that of the Agent- Genera], has been removed from those who, by a popular fiction, are supposed to be the guardians of the public purse. Is there room for wonder at the financial condition of New Zealand ?