NEW ZEALAND HERALD, AND AUCKLAND GAZETTE. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26, 1842.

New Zealand Herald and Auckland Gazette, Volume I, Issue 46, 26 January 1842, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND HERALD, AND AUCKLAND GAZETTE. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26, 1842.

Our pages will be found this week to contain copious extracts from the -papers of our sister colonies, from whence we have news to the 6th instant. Sydney, we are “happy to say, is, if any thing in a rather better position than at our previous advices; we do not see, after a hasty glance through their journals, any more of those startling failures that have convulsed, and almost annihilated the colonies during the past twelve months—rumour, however, with her hundred tongues, still speaks of more failures, and doubts are entertained of the solvency of onej of the oldest Banks in the colony : we will not mention names, as we trust that such a thing will not take place, and the very fact of too strong a suspicion being excited towards one of them, might be the very means of hastening, if not altogether causing its ruin, and bring others into its vortex. The colonies have sustained a shock which will take them some years to recover from* and it behoves us individually to trace back its commencement, and guard ourselves against similar errors—the proximate cause will be found to be a too liberal distribution of Bank favors—or, in other words, discounting any and every body’s Bill that had two names to it. The Directors of the various Banks have themselves to blame for the ruin thus brought on them, for had they exercised a little more judgment and discretion before they voted assistance to themselves » they would not have had afterwards to have propped up unstable individuals in order to attempt to save their own credit: thus it is that one false step brings many a one to an untimely death—and thus the first false step in discounting too liberally has led to the desolation and ruin whicn has almost overwhelmed and brought all the Australian colonies to an early grave.

We have at present escaped the general panic, and we are not yet certain but that we have the Government to praise for what in any other circumstance would be considered a disgrace to them —viz: their dilatoriness in establishing Courts ofjustice. We have now been a Crown colony near two years, and nothing better than a simple Court of Requests has been established for the recovery of debts—and this again, from the ignorance displayed by one who ought to know letter, has become a nullity : and on the whole, these two evils have probably been the saving of many a one among us from an early and premature insolvency. We hope our present‘enlightened Bank Manager and Directors wilL see the necessity of exercising their customary caution wiih greater vigilance than ever, and when the ensuing Supreme Court opens that they will examine with the eyes of Argus every bill placed before them for discount—if there is the slightest sign of accomodation about it, we say—discard it at once, and let no false delicacy attempt to rescue any one who may by chance wish for such assistance ; a sick patient is never recovered by being bolstered up with pillows at his side and back, for if once removed for however short a period he roust fall; if however other remedies are applied, and he still dies, there is an example set at once which does more good than a hundred sermons. Let one person fail through not having obtained Bank favors, and others will not look for them ; and this we hope will be too clearly seen as not to be adopted, and therefore we do hope that our young community will exist for many many years without being in the same condition that the other colonies are just, we are happy to say, emerging from.