THE REVISED BUDGET

Stratford Evening Post, Volume I, Issue 258, 9 October 1931, Page 5

THE REVISED BUDGET

WELLINGTON TOPICS

THE MINISTER OF FINANCE DARES (Special Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, Thursday. Though the Hon. W. Downie Stewart, the Minister of Finance in the newly constituted Coalition Government, had had less than a fortnight in which to familiarise himself with the intricacies of the finance of the Dominion, he was able last night to present to Parliament and to public at large an outline of their obligations which could be neither overlooked nor ignored. The Prime Minister, the Right Hon. G. W. Forbes, his immediate predecessor in the custody of the Treasury, had bequeathed to him a deficiency of £6,850,000, and to this huge sum a further amount of just upon £1,600,000 had to be added. None but a bold man, patriotic as well as courageous, would have accepted such a task. Mr. Stewart, however, had shown his metal before. In his first speech in the House indeed, on the earliest opportunity that came his way after the outbreak of the Great War, he appealed to his fellow members to set party strife aside and to give their whole efforts to the needs of the Empire. And his apepal bore fruit.

His Preparation. —Mr. Stewart, having as broad, a view of politics as he has of parties, it is interesting to look back upon his early life and career and understand something of the making of the man. Born in Dunedin in 1878, a son of the Hon. William Downie Stewart —four times returned to the House of Representatives by a Dunedin constituency and then appointed for life to the Legislative Council —the younger William Downie took a law degree at the Otago University and then travelled through Siberia and China at the time of the Japanese-Russian War; practised his profession in Dunedin: contested unsuccessfully the Dunedin South seat in the House of Representatives; read and wrote profusely; sat. in the Dunedin City Council, 1906-12; Mayor, 1913-14; elected to House of Representatives in 1914 and served during the war with the Otago Regiment until invalided home. He was returned to the House hi 1919, 1922, 1926 and 1928, obtaining Ministerial rank in 1920 i Between times he has applied himself to the solution of many problems and is numbered among the bestinformed members of the House.

Sixty-Three Years Ago.— ln view. Of the finanaial problems that are confronting the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance at the present time it will not be inopportune to recall the experiences of some of their predecessors in the administration of the affairs of the country. In 1868, Sir John Hall, then a member-of the second Stafford Ministry, waning to its fall, took charge of the Treasury during the absence of his chief and at the end of the financial year found himself with a deficit of ,£103,293. His chief had estimated the consolidated revenue for the year to amount to £1,084,000, and it had reached only £980,707. The heavens, it would seem, were about to fall. “I need hardly tell the committee,” ,Sir John forthwith told it, “that 1 have to speak of financial depression; that for the first time in the history of this colony its revenue exhibits a falling-off, corresponding, but too truly, with the general commercial depression which we know to exist throughout the colony. The ultimate result of this catastrophe, of course, was the fall of the Stafford Government and the advent of Sir William Fox and Sir Julius Vogel.

And After. —The new Minister came into office in June, 1869, and endured until September, 1872, Sir William Fox being Premier, Sir Julius Vogel Colonial Treasurer, and other prominent figures in its early constitution being Sir Donald McLean, long prominent in the affairs of the Colony as Native Minister; Sir Francis Dillon Bell and Mr. Isaac Earl Fealherston. Sir Julius Vogel, it is scarcely necessary to say, was an active figure in a somewhat anomalous combination. Its end came with the presentation of a Budget which showed a deficit of £116,136 Sir Julius failed to excuse. “I refuse to believe,” he declared in the last paragraph of his appeal, “that personal animosities or purely local considerations are to be elevated to the dignity of party questions, and if such is to be attempted the warning may not be out of season, that the interests at stake are far too important for the country to sanction them being converted into the playthings of imaginary parties.” And in good time the daring Treasurer saved the situation by jettisoning his Prime Minister and taking the leadership himself.