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New Zealand Mail, Issue 849, 8 June 1888, Page 16

There are several anomalies and obnoxious features in the new tariff which will doubtless be amended or excised in committee. * Perhaps the worst of all is the ad valorem duty of 20 per cent imposed on all imported machinery, excepting that used /for refrigerating and preserving meat, for mining, dairy, or agricultural purposes, and materials for manufacturing the same ; also printing machinery and engineers’ machine tools, portable engines and steam-engines above a certain size, steam fire-engines, sewing machines and soda-water machines. This may seem a long list of exceptions, but it must be remembered that outside that list stand many classes of machinery used in. various industries which are established or being started in this Colony, and absolutely indispensable in such industries, while it will for many years to come be utterly impracticable to construct such machinery in New Zealand. There are, for instance, the numerous varieties of machinery used in iron - working such as planingmachines, &c., and that required for woollen mills. A 20. per cent tax on such machinery must in many instances be absolutely prohibitive of the starting of those industries. This is going quite in the wrong direction. Every facility ouo-ht to be given for the admission of ° all requisites for the foundation of local industries, and of these requisites coal and machinery must always hold the chief place. can in many instances be far more usefully assisted in this way than by a heavy duty on the articles they produce. We hope that this item “ machinery, 20 per cent «icl valorem,” will be abandoned, by the Government or struck out in committee. The L 19,000 estimated to be obtained from the duty would be very dearly earned at the cost of giving a serious check and discouragement to colonial industries.

A point lias been raised that it will be very unfair for Civil servants whose salaries are reduced by reason of retrenchment to have their retiring allowance reckoned on the rate of salary as so reduced, and it has been urged that a special Act should be passed to obviate the unfairness. No doubtsuch operation would be very unfair, but it has already been amply provided against by the Appropriation Act of last session, which seems to have been curiously overlooked. The section referred to (No. 11) is as follows: —“Whenever any officer now in the Civil Service, who has an absolute or contingent right, to a superannuation allowance, shall, in any manner authorised by law, retire from such service during the present financial year or at some future period, and whether by reason of retrenchment or otherwise, he shall be entitled to have such superannuation allowance, calculated on the basis of the annual salary payable to him at the date of the passing of this Act, or any increased annual salary as the case may be, and although lie may not in either case have enjoyed such salary for the period proscribed .as a basis of such calculation under any Act relating to the Civil Service.” This of course meets the case entirely, as it was specially intended to do, and it is odd that it should have been lost sight of by those who ask for a special Act to the same effect to be passed.

Tiie Public Petitions Committee were occupi ed on Wednesday morning taking evidence on the question of the petition presented by the citizens or Wellington touching the juvenile prostitution in the city. With one exception, we be lieve, the whole of the witnesses examined, when asked their sugges tion of a remedy to abate the evil complained of, affirmed that the adoption of the Contagious Diseases Act and the raising of the age of consent to. 16 were the only possible means to mitigate phe present unsatisfactory state of affairs. The evidence of persons who were thoroughly well qualified to judge showed the excellent results which liad. been obtained in .those cities where, the Act bad been put into force. It was also sup-o-ested by these witnesses that the Act should be rendered by legislation compulsory of enforcement in all the principal centres of population. We entirely endorse this suggestion. There has been considerable opposition to the Act, but the principal opposition comes from those who have had no practical knowledge of its working, and who therefore only judge it from a purely theoretical or sentimental point of view. The experience of those who have investigated the working of the Act in Auckland and Christchurch shows that it has one effect that the petitioners seek, namoly, tho clearing of the streets of

abandoned women. Although the Ac only directly deals with those known to the police as leading vicious lives, it acts indirectly as a wholesome deterrent to those who secretly pui'sue an immoral calling. The cost of putting the Act into force in this city would involve an annual expenditure of from L2OO to L 250. This is a small sum when the] beneficial effect the Act would have in reducing what is a crying evil in our midst is taken into consideration. We trust the Government will not be led astray by any mere sentiment in the matter, but that they will look at it from a practical standpoint, and introduce a measure compelling the enforcement of the Act in all large towns, instead of leaving it at the option of local authorities, whose judgment cannot be depended on in such cases.

The latest telegraphic accounts of the new loan’s prospects are far more favourable than those received a week or so ago, which wei’e referred to in our last issue, but the price at which this 4 per cent loan is to be offered, L 96 10s, is deplorably low, especially when it is remembered that an Australian per cent loan recently realized above par. Deducting expenses of floating, the Colony would not get more than L 94 for every nominal LIOO. Let us hope that as the Budget figures are more fully grasped our credit may improve even before the 7tlx inst., and in spite of the characteristically venomous attack of The Standard.