SIR JULIUS VOGEL AT AUCKLAND.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1472, 25 February 1886, Page 3

SIR JULIUS VOGEL AT AUCKLAND.

Sir Julius Vogel addressed a meeting in Auckland last Tuesday evening, the Major being in the chair. He said his object was to restore equilibrium between revenue and expenditure. For the last 3 yeare £856,000 had been expended out of loan on roads and bridges while only £10,212 had been expended out of the consolidated revenue. The Customs revenue had decreased, and it would be necessary to put on an additional duty of £IOO,OOO to get the same revenue as in 1882. A corresponding increase had bean made in the shape of stamp and succession duties, which enabled a subsidy to be paid to local bodies. The cry of

RETRENCHMENT was a sham raised by those who pleaded for additional expenditure in their own districts Good officers were leaving the service because of inadequate payment, for the civil service was underpaid, being from 25 to 30 per cent below Victoria or New South Wales. There were numbers of civil servants who barely received sufficient to secure the meant of living after having been 20 years in the service. No material reduction could be made. SOURCES OJ BHVENUR. Tben there came the question of whether any additional revenue required should be obtained from the Customs or the property tax. If the property tax were decapitalised at 6 per cent, it would represent for Jths of a Id in the £ on capital value, a charge equal to Is 4d of the annual value and £d represented Is o|d in the £ of the annual value. He would not go into the question of changing to a land and income tax. He thought with land yielding eo badly, one shilling in the pound of the annual value was enough. More would stand in the way of settlement. The Customs tariff required to be raised. The average annual Customs per head from 1870 to 1884, both inclusive, was £2 13s sd. The highest year was £3 4i lid, the lowest of those years was for 1884, the last of the series, £2 6s 6d.But 1885 was even lower, for it amounted only to £2 5s 7d. The duty on wines, spirits, tobaocoes, and cigars, averaged 47 per cent, of the whole, equal to £1 5s per head, so that, exclusive of these duties, the average per head for other duties was £1 8s sd, What the Government had asked was only equal to 3s 4d per head, and that would have raised the Customs revenue to less than the average for fifteen yeare. In New South Wales, a oolony professing to be guided by freetrade principles, the Customs duties for 1884 averaged £2 a head, and would average more for the present year if the anticipations of the Colonial Treasurer should prove correct. The Customs tariff was substantially the only tax to which the Maori race contributed. It was desirable (not P) to make protection versus freetrade the question upon which to go the country. PUBLIC WORKS POLICY. The time had come when the public works policy should be settled. He would say what he thought that policy should be (1) The vigorous prosecution of railway works: (2) a reduction in the proportion of expenditure for other purposes; (3) work begun to be rapidly completed to a paying condition j (4) loans to be so tied up that they could not be diverted from the purpose for which they were borrowed, He avowed himself distinctly in favor of the East and West Coast Railway and the Nelson line, which he said would pay 2 per cent. When labor was plentiful and material cheap, as at present, was a good time to push on public works. RAILWAYS. The railways yielded over 3 per cent in cash, but that was not all they did. The services they rendered to the Post Office and other departments might be reckoned at £30,000, and they were not worked to yield as much profit as could be got from them, He found the district railway companies had been charging double the rates charged on the Government lines, and if the Government lines were in private bands, or if the Government charged heavier rates, they could be made to yield £200,000 more a year, They would in fact yield more than five per cent, without reckoning their collateral advantages. If the public works were stopped there would be a great exodus. YUBTHBB BORROWING, He referred to the disgraceful article wbioh appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald commenting on the borrowing policy of New Zealand, and said that since XBBQ New South Wales had borrowed £20,700,000. Thus in five years New South Wales hod borrowed more than New Zaaland had in fifteen years. In the latest financial statement it was said New South Wales was spending borrowed money sfc the rate of £460,000 a month. New South Wales intended to borrow again in June. The people of New South Wales lost £6,000,000 worth of stock through drought, and only for the borrowing policy adopted by Government they would have experienced a great crisis. If New Zealand did not borrow there would bo a great exodus of working men, ]ji Mr Maoandrow’s policy had been carried but New South Wales would not be so a million people now Thousands of farmers, then ready to come out, were literally frightened away. Were not they now going to be abused out ol following tho example of New South Wales. They did what to go on in the same gigantic scale. Instead of nearly fiv*. millions a year, he «d he thought a million and a half should bellput on railways, am a moderate proportionate other purposes

If hn »penfc 10s in the £ nnproduotively ■he railways would have to yield 8 per cent to cover the interest, but if they spent only 6s in the £ on unproductive purposes, then the railways had only to yield 5J per cent fo cover the interest. The expenditure he ssked for he was convinced could be carried out for Customs duties not t xceedu g£2 10s a head, and a property tax not exceeding three-fourths, or at most seven-eighths, of a penny. LOANS. Loans should be raised for a certain purpose and ought not be devoted to anything else. He could carry on till next October without borrowing but it was dangerous to exhaust funds. During the recent Russian scare New Zealand was told she could not borrow nor get any advances from London. DISSOLUTION. To delay dissolution would mean that authority to raise a loan could not be son t to England till next January next, and the money would be required in the meantime. Besides £25,000 would be saved to the country. NEXT SESSION'S POLICY. The questions requiring consideration were a substitute for The Roads and Bridges Act, amendment of The Hospitals and Charitable Aid Aot, the giving loans to farmers on a small scale, increase in the Customs, to push on railways, and the pur chase of large estates to out them into small farms. Sir Julius received the mnst favorable hearing he has ever received in Auckland, and a vote of thanks and confidence wbb carried by a large majority. An amendment approving of borrowing was lost on a show of hands.