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Southland Times, Issue 2146, 5 July 1875, Page 2

Tiie Guardian — one of our Dun edin contemporaries— has recently been studying Municipal ."Finance, and as a consequence, has delivered a homily on the chronic borrowing pro pensities of Municipal Councils. We may at once state that we are at one with him in his desire to warn those bodies of the evil effects that are sure to follow an undue pandering to the taste for large civic expenditure. It is with his analysis of the financial position of Invercargill that we have to find fault. If our contemporary had carefully studied the figures he quotes from in the estimate of receipts and expenditure published in the Gazette, he would have come to the conclusion that an explanation was necessary — at least to those who are not conversant with the object with which the annual statutory statement is published. The result of such an explanation would have been that the spice of interest and alarm which his figures gave to his article would have been wanting, that is if he wished to state facts, and some of the grounds for his admonition would have been found to have no existence. Our readers will best understand the pith of our remarks when we inform them that our contemporary mistook the meaning of the item, " deficiency, £3000," in the statutory statement, and assumed that it was an actual deficiency. The object of the statement is to enable the Municipal Council to strike a rate for tbe ensuing year sufficient to meet their requirements. In other words the law demands that, previous to the commencement of each financial year, every corporation shall prepare a statement of the proposed expenditure for the year, and as in the case of Invercargill this was eet down in detail. For our purpose we group the figures as follows: — Receipts. Expenditure. Proceeds of Gas Deben tares,.. £10,000 Gasworks „,£IO,OOO j Oedinaet Municipal Erceipts. Expenditure. Proposed loan £3000 £8000 Revenue from Licenses, rents, &c 2000 Deficiency ... 3000 £8000 £8000 This deficiency is the highest amount the Corporation proposes to obtain from rates, and by publishing the above statement they may fix a rate to bring in that or any less sum. This item in the rock that the Guardian has split upon. With the explanation "We have made, the startling figures of our critic break down. His efforts, however, to check the unseemly borrowing propensities of municipal bodies are in tbe right direction. — I

We have been a good deal puzzled by the following paragraph, "which we take from the columns of the Dunedin Evening Star ;—" By thp San Jfran-

cisco mail his Honor the Superintendent received advices from the Home agent for the province to the effect that he is unable to charter vessels for the Bluff Harbor, unless by the payment of £2 per head for each emigrant over and above the rate of passage charged to Port Chalmers." We are inclined to disbelieve a statement so discreditable to the sagacity and information of shipowners on the one hand, and to the business ability of the Home agent for the province of Otago on tbe other. On a former occasion, when it was our duty to shield tbe Bluff Harbor from aspersions cast ou it by the Press of Dunedin, we showed that merchants could import goods to the Bluff at the same rates of freight and insurance as they could to Port Chalmers. It follows, therefore, that the importation of immigrants Bhould be effected on equally favorable termß. The only possible drawback to ships loading for the Bluff is the scarcity of freight. But when we consider that it ia proposed to forward by each ship no fewer than between 200 and 300 emigrants, the space remaining for cargo is not likely to be so great that; it could not be filled up by goods offering for Southland. We are afraid that the old silly fear of the Bluff Harbor may not yet have been driven out of the heads of people at home, and we have half a suspicion that the Provincial agent may not be up to this part of his business. Are we to have a repetition of the blundering timidity that led Mr Galbraith into a heavy expenditure for extra insurance on the Timaru, when that ship could have sailed in and out of Bluff Harbor even without the aid of a tug, and with no risk to alarm'any one that knew what the port is ? We shall lock for some explanation of this policy, if there should turn out to be truth in the paragraph we have quoted. In the meantime we call the attention of the Kailway and Immigration Committee to the rumor, as the subject comes quite within the scope of their action.