THE NATIONAL DEBT.

Otago Witness, Issue 2842, 2 September 1908, Page 66

THE NATIONAL DEBT.

FINANCIAL OUTLOOK. CHRISTPHURCH, August 28. At the annual meeting of the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce to-day the retiring president (Mr Albert Kaye), in the course of his presidential address, quoted figures which, .he said, showed that during the past 20 yeans great progress had been made by the Dominion, but it was all too true that in the same period the public debt had grown from £36,758,437 to £66,453,897,- or an average of about £1,500,000 yearly. The total was startling, yet while there might have been som4 waste and extravagance incidental to the handling of euch vast sums, in. the main the loans had been well arranged at low rates of interest, and the bulk of the money had been expended in reproductive works. Th© present lightening of the financial _ reins need not be viewed with distrust or special uneasiness, inconvenient and disturbing ac it might seem to some, for the reason that the new policy was not because of extravagant advances to unfinancial residents or undoubtful securities, but rather that the- investments of the well-to-do had been fully and rigidly placed, so that with the somewhat unlooked for and sudden depreciated values of some of the Dominion's commodities, notably wool, flax, and pelts (which he . hoped had only temporarily ceased to leave the handsome profits over working expenses), the ordinary flow had become a, lessened quantity, insufficient to provide for the customary demands on euch funds. Much as one might view with some trepidation the increasing public indebtedness of the Dominion, he thought he was expressing the general opinion of bankers, merchants, and others, that the placing of the £1,250,000 loan already authorised would do much to relieve thi present tension. Should a more pronounced movement in the already improved tone in American monetary circles be coincident therewith, then they might hope to see the existing financial cloud entirely disappear, having served the useful purpose of checking speculation and heedless trading beyond a legitimate line;