CORRESPONDENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8424, 27 November 1890, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE CITY ELECTION. TO THE EDITOR. Sin, —As a country settler of more than thirty years standing I hope I shall not be deemed too intrusive by suggesting to Auckland electors the desirability (at this epoch in our political state) of returning as members to Parliament for the city electorate Dr. Wallis, Messrs. Upton and Withy, who are men of standing and without fads or crazes, so thab the interest of commerce and agriculture may stand a chance of being amalgamated in the coming new Parliament. 1' am, etc., 11. S. Andrews. Mangere, November 26, 1890. TO the editor. '' Sir,—What are we about in Auckland ? Are we going to allow the country electorates to send good men to represent them in the next Parliament, while we send men of straw from the city ? Cannot we get better men than those now in the field? Where is the patriotism of Messrs. Upton, J. Reid, A. Devore, McMillan, J. and F. Pliillipps, and others of that ilk ? Surely in this crisis some of these could be induced to stand by Messrs. Goldie, Bryce, W. S. Allen, and Monk, and so get a good strong representation from the Auckland district.— I am, etc., " Elector. " If elected, will you oppose all borrowing by the general Government either within or without the colony, and for any purpose whatever ?" TO THE EDITOR. Sir, The above question was put to Mr. Rees at his meetinglast night,and hisanswer was "No." Such being the case, I cannot vote for him, nor shall I vote for any other candidate giving a similar reply; nor for any candidate who, like Dr. Wallis, either does not'or will not understand the drift of this question, which is simply this : The Premier, in his manifesto, unmistakably (but sub rosa) indicates his intention to borrow." For whilst loudly proclaiming the fact that lie is opposed to all borrowing, and thab there is no necessity for it, as the colony has increased its taxable area last year by four millions, ho, in a subsequent paragraph, states that it will be necessary to raise money in the colony in order to encourage settlement. " Encourage settlement !" Oh, the curse of these euphemisms and truisms ! How they deceive and mislead tho unthinking ! Liberalism ! Toryism !—mere election cries. Such distinctions do nob exist in New Zealand, and all that we require to do is to seek for honest, intelligent men, with a<lesue for economy, who, seeing the evils that have resulted from past borrowing, will resolutely set their faces against adding another pound to our already gigantic debt. And I for one will vote for these, be they in favour of the property tax, the land tax, protection, or free trade, or, better still, the gradual reduction of the volume of taxation. But to come back to my subject. What is the difference between borrowing within or without the colony ? It is simply the difference " 'twixt tweedledum and tweedledee." With this exception, that we shall have to pay for English money borrowed here, from, say, Messrs. Samuel Vaile or William Aitken, 1 per cent, or 2 per cent, more than if the same money wero borrowed in England. Bub this is not the greatest objection I have to these proposed schemes ; but the fact that they will give the Government opportunities of again throwing away, as they have in the past, 10s in the £ ; and anyone who does not believe that this will be the case, must have either had very little experience of the evils of borrowing either by Governments or companies, or must be of that sanguine temperament which usually loads to the ruin of all they undertake. It is a pity that Mr. Rees and others should be led away by the fallacies so cleverly covered up by Sir H. Atkinson, but it is monstrous that he who has had so much to do with these wasted millions should start another crusade in the same direction, and that he should entangle Mr. Mitchelson, who has hitherto been free from blame, in the meshes of his borrowing net. When I remember that I am a New Zealander, and that all my interests are here, and that I am powerless to prevent this wanton mischief at the hands of men whose panacea for all our evils is, that of all weak men in similar circumstances, i.e., borrow, I am ready to despair, and cast in my lot with the crowd who eat, drink, and are merry, for to-morrow they die, and posterity or the Bankruptcy Court may pay their debts. What say you —I am, etc., J. M. McLachlan. MR. REES ON THE MINISTRY. TO THE EDITOR. Sir, — appears that Mr. Rees has at the Mount Eden meeting repeated some of the assertions he made at St. James's Hall, and challenges all and sundry to meet him to have it out in a forensic duel. But few of those who dabble in public affairs belong to the class which lives and thrives by making the worse appear the better cause, and of those few there is probably not one fit to hold a candle to the great stonewaller, W. L. Rees, so that his challenge is not very likely to be accepted. But it is at any rate presuming on the credulity of the Eden electors to ask them to believe that the Maori would have given up the most valuable part of their patrimony to the pakeha for nothing; or, even if they did, that either Mr. Rees, or any other adept in Maori land-buying, would have given his services "free of cost." When any man goes out of his way to offer his services to tho public free of cost, it is time to look out for—say, squalls—in the air. It is not strictly true, as Mr. Rees assorts, that all the big estates were acquired during Sir G. Grey's absence from the colony. They were in course of acquisition in the South Island, and had commenced in Wellington and Hawke's Bay, but the bulk of the latter were acquired after Grey's return to the colony. This as respects land acquired from the Government, bub the large estates acquired from the Maori were all acquired after the Governor (Grey) had taken off the restrictions, and allowed direct purchase from the Maori. As to the East Coast lands, Mr. Rees is (by his own showing) a much ill-used man ; bub if he had had more pliable men to deal with than Richardson (Minister of Lands) and Mitchelson the public would have been let in for what is sometimes called a " bad egg " or two.—l am, etc., F.C. IGNORANCE OR MIS REPRESENTATION : WHICH ? TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In your issue of the 24th instant, Mr. F. G. Ewington, in a letter referring to his " eviction" of the editor of the Tribune for non-payment of rent due by him for the use of an office for which Mr. Ewington is agent, concludes as follows :—" Some people, however, should- be grateful to him (the editor of the Tribune) for making a martyr of himself, for he supplies the first practical illustration in Auckland, of Henry George's no-rent theory." (Italics mine.) Now, sir, this statement of Mr. Ewington's leaves us only two alternatives(l) That Mr. Ewington utterly fails to understand Henry George's position on the rent question ; (2) that understanding he has chosen to misrepresent that position, and bo deliberately state that which he knows to be false. Mr. Ewington may impale himself on whichever horn of the dilemma suits him best; but for the benefit of your general readers who may not as yet have studied this question, I may state that Henry George's theory is not a no rent theory. It would be better described as a "no {/round-rent theory." Rent for offices, shops, warehouses, houses, barns, or other improvements, would not be touched by Henry George's single tax ; he simply proposes that the State shall appropriate for the benefit of the whole community that value which attaches to land by reason of the presence, growth, and improvement of the whole community, so that Mr. Desmond's action in refusing to pay office rent is in no sense "a, practical illustration of Henry George's no-rent doctrine." am, &c., A. Withy. MR. THOMPSON AND THE TEMPERANCE CAUSE. TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In your daily issue of the 19th instant, one writing from Paparoa, under the 710711 de plume of " Truth," takes exception to Mr. Thompson's statement), " That he has always worked with the temperance cause in the House," and states thab " It is a well-known fact" that Mr. Thompson is now the owner of two big hotels in Whangarei, and also some near Auckland. He adds, " I only write this for the benefit of electors." To .the impartial, it looks very like an attempt to prejudico them. May I, through your columns, inform "Truth" that Mr. Thompson says that the only hobei he is iu nny jju&wwtwl in is tM liamo i

Hotel, the freehold on which ib stands being hie property, whilst the Auckland secretary of the Alliance has written to our local secretary in Paparoa, stating thab both candidates for this electorate have , satisfactorily answered the questions! put) to them, and that Mr. Thompson (pleas? attend, Mr. " Truth "), when at) Wellington, has always worked with the Temperance party. — am, &c.. Fair Pxjiy. Paparoa, 25th November, 1890. WANTED A POLICY. to the EDITOR, Sir, —I have been noting carefully the electioneering speeches of the several candidates for Parliamentary honours now before electors of the colony, and it is, I think, a source of great regret, and a cause of great fear for the future, that hardly one of these speeches rises an inch above the standard of Little Peddlington. The shattlecock of taxation is knocked about from one side to the other in this game for popular favour, as if the form and incidence of the tax was of much greater moment than the power of earning and paying the vast sum of money—nina . and a-half millions annually—required ten meet our engagements with our creditors, in addition to the amount required for the daily maintenance of 000,000 people and for the annual charges of our civil, government.. The policy of repudiation, in the form of a tax upon our : bondholders abroad, suggested by Sir George Grey, and greatly approved by Mr, Desmond (whoever he may be) and his fellows as the only practical policy for relief from our present burden of taxation, that is now before the public. It affords some satisfaction that this project, suitable only as the platform of a political " Kelly Gang," meets as little favour front the honest people as it did from their representatives in Parliament, when it was "hooted" indignantly out of the House. We'want something more than relief from the property tax. Retrenchment in Government expenditure} is a very weak plank much relied on in tho platforms of other orators. " The Skinflints " in the last session exhausted themselves in biting at that file with very little good results. It is a very old nostrum for the impecunioeity of a Government, bub ib cannot be applied so successfully to such an establish merit' as it can to one's personal or household expenses. You must have civil servants if you must have Custom Houses, and Courts of Justice, and post offices, and telegraphs, and railways, and at the rest ; if you do nob pay men decently, and treat them with some sorb o£ consideration, the service you will get will be, very dear, however low the "screw" may be. There is as much human nature in civil servants in this regard as there is in Maritime Councils and their affiliated unions. There are many civil servants compelled to work eight or ten or more hours every day for a year who would bo very glad to change places with gentlemen in the House who receive £150 and a railway pass for sitting in easy chairs for a few hours four days in the week for three months in the year, even if obliged to listen to Mr. Fish or Mr. Seddon all the while. The cost of three columns of talk in Hansard this year, which nob one man in a hundred in this or any other country on. earth could have the patience to read, would be a very tangible item for retrenchment if honourable members could afford it or were sincere. We must have, say, £15,000,000 in value of produce, in one form or another, to pay our lawful debts and feed and keep our people every year. Say that the skinflint policy had reduced official charge*) by £100,000, what then? We still want £14,900,000 annually. Where does it come from ? It must now be mainly the product of the labour and the capital of a handful of people, not equal in number, as I have said, to the population of many a secondrate city on the other side of the equator ; and we call ourselves the people of New Zealand. We are about as near to what the people of New Zealand ought to be in numbers, as the tailors of Tooley-street were to the people in England. Sir Wm. Fox's "flea in a bucket" would symbolise our condition more exactly, and we might even admit that the flea was marvellously industrious. The adult male population of the colony is, we are told, 164,000, one-third ab leasb of that number belong to tho non-produc-ing class—doctors, lawyers, clergymen, civil servants of all kind?, merchants, storekeepers, shopkeepers, and all those in towns engaged oil the work of distribution. We rely then mainly at present upon the labour of 110,000 men, with the help of such capital as they can command, to provide the millions that we require every year to pay our debts and maintain the whole people. Surely this is a heavy load and most grievous and dangerous burden. Ib has not apparently suggested itself to any of our present candidates, one excepted, that a wider distribution of this enormous weight would lighten the individual burden, at the same time that it increased tho general capacity for production. Members of our Chambers of Commerce, Mr. McMillan here, and Mr. Stead in Canterbury, wise enough to see and not afraid to speak, have urged the necessity of resuming Stateaided immigration as one means, at least, of avoiding a cataclysm ; but not more than one of the men now upon the stump —judging from newspaper reports of theirspeeche3 —has eyes to see, although it is obvious upon the surface ; or, if he have seen it, courage to recommend, a remedy so safe, so certain, and so simple, as the transfusion of new and fresh blood into the noble army of workers in this colony of ours, now staggering under protection and weakened by incessant toil. To me it seems a judicial blindness.—l am, etc., X. November 24, 1890. WHY DECENT MEN DON'T STAND FOR PARLIAMENT. TO THE EDITOR. ( Sir, —Does any one wonder why decent men don't stand for Parliament, and if so, can they continue to do so after last night's meeting ? Here we have a diffident man like Mr. Mitchelson calling meetings nearly every evening, and. submitting himself to be bullied and badgered by any person who may happen to be present. One would think that were enough, but no. In addition we have a disappointed land agent and a leather-lunged lawyer making a great point of the fact (and being applauded for doing so) that Mr. Mitchelson declines to attend meetings called by them for the purpose, apparently of having an interchange of personalities such as we saw last night. And what is the excuse for all this ? First, because Mr. Mitchelson after promising to do his best, and after having fulfilled thab promise, has failed first to convince a majority of his colleagues, .and afterwards the Railway Commissioners, that Mr. Vaile's scheme is either reasonable or practicable. He also was unable to convince his colleagues that Mr. Vaile should be appointed Chief Commissioner. At this Mr. Vaile is, naturally, enraged, and abuses Mr. Mitchelson in the manner which characterises all his references to those who do not swallow his scheme holus bolus. He is also enraged thab he has failed to secure the assistance of the railway revenue in selling those large properties, the maps of which literally cover the walls of his office. Then, we have a leather-lunged lawyer slanging him, because he couldn't see his way, in the face of valuations made by the Surveyor - General and an independenn valuer, to advise the Government to tako the properties of the East Coast Settlement Company off his hands at his valuation, and thereby put an enormous sum into tho coffers of the Bank of New Zealand. Truly, poor Mr. Mitchelson has a hard task. On the one hand he is accused of favouring the Bank of New Zealand, and on the other abused for refusing to do so. , No wonder our best men retire from political life after they have tried it, and others shrink from it. Mr. Mitchelson, I know, consented with the greatest reluctance to stand again, and certainly his re. luctance has been fully justified. I trust, however, that he will continue to steer his own course, regardless of thoso pestilent fellows who are a curse to the community, and no doubt he will be returned by a large majority. Surely ib is sufficient for these men, if they have grievances, that he exposes himself almost nightly upon a public platform to thenattacks. Mr. Vaile did attack him once, and got a complete answer ; but thab didn't satisfy him. On the contrary, he and Mr. Rees, with characteristic impudence, coolly invite him to subject himself to the sort of treatment which was meted out to Mr. Ewington last night. Surely the electors will show their opinion of this sort of thing by the ballot-box.l am, &c., Qios Who WAS jßs<wis»'NiraD.