New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, JULY 10, 1874.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4151, 10 July 1874, Page 2

New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, JULY 10, 1874.

Two o£ a trade, it is said, never agree, and we presume a similar reflection may be applied to an ex-Premier’s feelings towards his successor. Mr. Waterhouse, in his speech on the Address in Reply, certainly shows that he is little able or willing to approve of anything which the present Premier does. Everything with which it could be supposed Mr. Vogel had had anything to do was censured by him. His statements concerning Mr. Vogel’s visits to the different Provinces were simply inventions. His allegations concerning the number of immigrants ordered, and the authority given to the Government, were glarinlgy inaccurate. His vaticinations concerning the financial position of the country were just of a character calculated to bring about the results he predicted. Large effects from little causes spring, and an alarmist, even in the shape of a Waterhouse, may do mischief. He read a number of figures concerning the bank returns, and, as usual, was only able to compare them with those of the Australian Colonies. It was not necessary to quote figures to assure people that business is much more active in Hew Zealand than in the other Colonies—that people, in short, have such confidence in the Colony as to enter to the full extent their means allow, into commercial, industrial, and productive enterprise. The Banks may, of course, over-trade upon the capital at their command, but certainly the returns show nothing of the kind now, and if Mr. Waterhouse’s vision was not of a very limited nature, it might have struck him that many Banks out of Australia do infinitely larger businesses than all the New Zealand Banks together, on much less capital. Mr. Waterhouse was particularly unwise in his references to Provincial borrowing. It would, at least, have been good taste for him to have been silent on the subject. He was not very communicative when ho carried through the Legislative Council, last year, the Bill which enabled the Province of Wellington to borrow £IOO,OOO for land reclamation purposes. The title of the Bill well disguised its objects, but it was essentially a Borrowing Bill, and one, perhaps, which members from the different Provinces who had thrown out Bills for tiseful purposes in various parts of the country would have been hardly inclined to sanction had the honorable gentleman in charge of it been as voluble on the subject as he was on Wednesday afternoon. It would be well for Mr. Waterhouse if he oftenor remembered that discretion is the better part of valor. Though he seems inclined to forget it, the country will not fail to remember how he went up like a rocket and came down like a stick. He went up like a rocket because Sir George Bowen, who thought there was something in him, insisted on letting him off. The distinguished pyrotechnist subsequently found he had burnt his fingers.