A SENSIBLE OPINION.

Oamaru Mail, Volume X, Issue 3434, 2 January 1886, Page 4

A SENSIBLE OPINION.

(Australasian.) Sir Julias Vogel, we gather from onr New Zealand files, has announced a bold more. In the existing Parliament, the Ministry of which he is the actual chief, while Mr Stoat is the nominal one, cannot master a working majority—or, in fact, a majority at all; and after the dire experiences of last session, when the House of Representatives cut op and re-sbaped every Government proposal, including their whole scheme of finance, the Treasurer can be looking forward with little hope to the meeting of Parliament next June. The country recalled Sir Julius Vogel to power to relieve it from the leng depression—a depression for which the previous Ministry were in no wise responsible. The House would neither listen to his protective tariff nor trust him with discretionary power over power over loan expenditure. The move proposed is the unfurling of the protectionist flag, the taking of a farther plunge in the direction of borrowing, and the dissolution of Parliament after the electors shall have been sufficiently roused to assure the Ministry of a> commanding majority. The depression from which the colony is now slowly emerging was caused, many wise minds believe, by the fictitious prosperity that set in with and cseated by the reckless spending of the Vogel Ministry in 1870. when an immense loan waa raised for railways and public works. Depression is the season of nervous prostration that ensues after undue exhiliration—the dullness that comes after champagne—and Sir Julius Vogel's cure is to uncork a fresh lot of bottles. New Zealand, we trust, will take a sober wlew of its own case. Its public debt, the heaviest of any in the Australasian colonies, already absorbs far more in in interest than the population can comfortably pay. MrG. M. Reed, who on matters connected with immigration is no ynmrnn authority, having delivered lectures all over England as the immigration agent of New Zealand, and travelled to and fro between the colony and London Many a time, haa proposed a different remedy. He recommends Parliament to offer inducements, in the shape of free passages, to all persona possessing a capital of L 5,000 or more, and willing to try their fortune in a new land, to cross the seas, and settle in New Zealand. Mr Reed's figores are fascinating. They show that immigration ao conducted will be selfsupporting, and the colony more than repaid for its enterprise by the contributions that each new settler will make to the general revenue as a taxpayer. All fine schemes of this sort have a fatal weak ■pot. Mr Reed's would be destroyed by the grossest evasions. At a time when the wage earning e ! a»ses are asking for cheap passages from Donedin to Melbourne, there appears to be an urgent necessity for a Government composed of cool-headed men of business.