SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.

Colonist, Volume XXIII, Issue 2630, 22 November 1879, Page 1 (Supplement)

SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.

THB FINANCIAL STATEMENT. (From the Wellington Post.) The Greyite organs have loßt no time inabusing Major Atkinson's Financial Statement, and have not deemed it at all necessary tbat they should make themselves acquainted with the nature of the proposals and endeavor to understand them before expressing any opinion on the subject. The Government now in office find tbat jtheir predecessors have so recklessly squandered the public money and muddled the colonialfinances that in their two years of power they have converted the handsome yearly surplus which existed when they took office into tk deficit of -€951,000 on tbe current 1 year, and a permanent annual deficiency ol | some £800,000. It is tbe Grey Government who have left on the shoulders of the Coleny an annual debt of £800,000, which is at the rate of about £2 per head on our population of some 400,000. The part of. the preseut Ministry in the transaction is merely to make good as best they may a deficiency which they bad no hand in creating, which in fact they, did their beat to avert, but which nevertheless has been left to them as a legacy by those whom they have succeeded in office. Their task is one so herculean, so fraught with immense labor, responsibility and odium.-that they might almost have been excused had they shrunk back appalled from an undertaking so formidable.. But to tbeir credit, be it said, tbey have not thus "put their band to the plough, and'turned back;" tbey bare no* tried by " tinkering " a little here and there, by manipulating accounts, borrowing ia one direction, getting advances in another, and by the thousand-and-one devices familiar to political financiers endeavored to " make things pleasant"—to put off the evil day, when delay meant ruin—to lull to slumber when sleep would be death. We do not profess to pronounce any judgment as yet, on the. details of the Ministerial proposals. These will.need, careful and . painstaking examination in all their bearing, and this of necessity must be a work of time, N ay, the most important detail of all —the Property Tax Bill—-by which measure three-fifths of the total sum needed to make up the deficit is proposed to be raised, is not before the House. It may be that we shall find much that, in our opinion, it would be desirable to alter and amend in the proposals as now submitted, admittedly "in the rough." That is a matter for future consideration. We are now dealing merely with the general spirit of the Statement—that of meeting our difficulties boldly in the face, of "making a clean breast" of our whole position, "nothing extenuating nor ought setting down in malice," and of making an earnest, vigorous, and determined effort to overcome'those difficulties, and to place our finances once more on a sound and enduring basis. That principle has our hearty approval and support. It is the opinion of those best qualified to judge, that the determination evinced by the present Government to act on such a principle, and to carry it but thoroughly will"have a marked influence on the Home money market, as proving pur finances to be really solvent, our resources elastic, and our Government resolved on reforming the disorder into which our fiscal system had drifted. It is believed that this will have an appreciable and excellent effect in regard to the floating of the new loan, and this in itself would be a vast public gain. Tbe fresh burden placed on us through the incompetence and profligacy of of the late Ministry is undoubtedly a very heavy one—£2 per head per annum on an average. But the assertion of one Greyite organ, that " practically the proposals madeincrease the taxation to the extent of about £2 per head for every man, woman, and child in the Colony," is so obviously ridiculous and ii accurate that it must proceed either from very dense ignorance, or else from a deliberate intention to deceive. For, in the first place, three-fifths of the whole' sum is to be furnished by a property tax, which exempts all property under the value of £300; and, in the next place, the new duties are imposed mainly on articles jof comparative luxury, so that the real pressure of taxation* will vary according to the ability of the persons taxed to bear it, and proportionately to the sacrifice each would, thus be called on to make; so the ■ probability is that while the richer members;of tbe community will have to pay perhaps £20 on an average more than hitherto, the poorer classes, who form a vast majority, will.not pay more than perhaps 2« per head extra. These figures of course are taken merely at haphazard, but such at least jis the principle on, which the Government proposals appear to be founded; and, if so, it lis a fair and just one, which should commend ! itself to general approval. |

The Duke of Beaufort; ;t^lls thel English farmers, that^tbey'^can't^coinpete,Ywilh: America in wheat-growiog,<,aod must turn their attention to cheaper and better modes of growing beef and mutton if they expect to MBDtjla.in that dirtjction,