WELLINGTON NEWS NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9347, 25 April 1889, Page 5

WELLINGTON NEWS NOTES.

[by telegraph.— correspondent.] Wellington, Wednesday. ' : MINISTERIAL MOVEMENTS. The Premier has arranged to visit Christchurch after leaving Westporfc. He will not visit Nelson as at first intended. ... TIIE MEANING OF THE SURPLUS. Under this head, the Times of this morning has the following, which bears the stamp of authoritative inspiration. Starting from the Primage Duty, the writer says that this, taken with the reduction of expenditure, represents a voluntary selfsacrifice on the part of the; New Zealand people for the sake of establishing a sounder, : more wholesome, and more honest system of public ~ finance than had obtained previously, and . this ought to be widely, known. New Zealand has so long been a mark for the finger of scorn on account of her improvident habits, financing, and her apparent helpless reliance on borrowed money, that it is only, fair she should receive due credit for a resolute and successful effort to reform her ways, and to make her income and. expenditure balance one another by legitimate means. It is no longer a question of one Ministry's finance against another. Not only has the StoutVogel Ministry, which left us a deficit of £525,000, now undergoing reduction by: means of special taxation, passed utterly away, but its two chiefs are not even in Parliament, or in public life at all. They have departed, leaving a deficit of £528,000 behind them, £400,000 of which has been funded, while the balance is, as . we have already remarked, being steadily diminished by means of a special tax. The late Ministry have not even left a party behind them, for their erstwhile* adherents were among the most cordial supporters of the financial reforms introduced by the Government now in office. Even for party purposes, therefore, there can be no object in decrying the present position of the colonial finances. Such a course would be as idle as unpatriotic. There stands the solid fact . that the colony, in its fixed determination to pay its way honestly henceforth, has by rigid retrenchment in expenditure, and by accepting an extra burden in the way of special taxation, been able to show, instead of a deficit of £528,000, a surplus of £77,828, of which surplus it devotes £46,132 toward making good the deficit of former years. This, too, in spite of the fact that for the first time in our history certain heavy charges have been borne by the consolidated fund, instead of being provided for. out of loan. That so vast a reform should have heen effected is a matter upon which the people of this colony may with reason congratulate themselves. .