JOHN BULL'S BIG BURDEN

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1716, 18 January 1905, Page 54

JOHN BULL'S BIG BURDEN

(From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, November 25. Mr T. Gibson-Bowles, M.P., is a worthy f>arliamentarian whom the British pubic does not take too seriously as a rule, but the pamphlet he has just issued on oxir “National Finance,” discloses a state of affairs in connection with our public indebtedness that must command the attention of all thoughtful people. The purpose of Mr Bowles’s pamphlet is to sound an alarm, to show the exaggeration of the national expenditure as recently developed, and of the national liabilities as recently increased; and also to disclose the inadequacy of the control of Parliament and the urgent and pressing need for prompt action.” Some of Mr Bowles’s figures are certainly calculated to make the ordinary citizen who thinks in modest pounds, shillings and pence gasp. He that in the last ten years the total State revenue has increased from about a hundred and seven to about a hundred and seventy-seven millions a year, while the local expenditure has risen from about seventy-seven to nearly a hundred and forty-eight millions a year, making an increase in the total annual amount extracted from the citizens, in one shape or another, in return for State and local service of no less than a hundred and forty-one millions. At the same time the liabilities of the State in the form of debt, termin-ible annuities, guaranteed loans, and so on, have risen in the like period from seven hundred and thirty-eight million to nearly nine hundred and forty-nine millions, and the total liabilities of the nation, including local debt, from a thousand and three millions to close on fourteen hundred and eighteen millions. Mr Bowles contends that the control of Parliament over, and its paver of checking, the growth of expenditure and debt have been most seriously diminished in several important respects, and that State expenditure and State liabilities, especiallv in the shape of unfunded debt, have been so largely increased by diverse and unwise methods, as to amount now to a public danger. He thinks, and most people will agree with him, that there is urgent need for the reduction of the enormous unfunded or floating debt. In. August, last this floating debt amounted to eighty-two millions, and he considers that it is not merely affecting the national credit, but strangling trade and preventing its revival. The nation, Mr Bowles admits, is able to bear a very heavy load of debt, but lie urges that not even John Bull, with all his resources, can long continue to bear up under his increasing burden of taxation.