THE Temuka Leader TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1903. THE LOAN.

Temuka Leader, Issue 4015, 24 February 1903, Page 2

THE Temuka Leader TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1903. THE LOAN.

"■ Curses■ like chickens, come, home to "; roost." ; For years'. Conservative newspapers and, Conservative orators have zealously and endeavoured to ruin :the Liberal Government by destroying ,our credit in London. In a letter, published in .(.lie New Zealand Times during last session, Mr Montrose, one of New Zealand's foremost journalists stated that when in London business' took him to the office of Baron Schroeuer, and in course of conversation, that gentleman pulled out of his drawer excerpts'.from New Zealand newspapers and extracts from speeches made in N,ew Zealand in t, which, the. colony wjas represented, as in , a. state of bankruptcy. That is the .effect the misrepresentations, of. the Opposition press and.speakers haive in London. Financiers in London seized, on these and eventually used them to ru:n our credit as shown by the . nonsuccess of our present loan. The New Zealand enemies of-tho Government the .powder and. -shot for London blackmailers like Wilson, but we hav& the sad consolation, that the curses will come back to roost on their heads as well as on others. For twelve years the enemies of the Government have in aseason and out, of season been trying to destroy the Government by ruining, the credit of the colony, but hitherto they failed ignominiously till there has arisen a concatination of circumstances which com'bined to assist them. The war in South Africa absorbed a great deal of money, and consequently there is not so much of it seeking investment now as there used to be, but that is not the chief cause of the failure of :our loan. The cable from London gives a clue to the cause. It is due it says to the impending South African loan, a'nd the drought in Australia. The South African loan will be secured not by South Africa but by Great Britain, and consequently English investors consider it safe. This is the loan Mr Chamberlain is going to raise to assist the Boers in South Africa. Even that is not the worst. The drought in Australia has put into Mr Wilson's hand a weapon which he is weilding with fiendish energy with the view of destroying confidence in Australian securities. Mr Wilson knows as well as anyone can tell him that Australian finances . are sound, 'but his object is to. 'bring down prices of stocks in the money-market. When this is done his friends the financiers will buy them up and keep them until the panic created by Mr Wilson is over and then they will sell them again at greatly increased prices. This is what occurs frequent-. Iv on the London money market, and this is what is going on now. But we may be asked how can this affect New Zealand securities ? Simply, this : The average Englishman regards New Zealand as part of Australia, and does not know that while the Commonwealth is suffering from drought our trouble has been too much rain. This want of knowledge : on the Englishman's part Dart makes him regard New Zealand as standing in the same category as Australia, and hence the chief cause of the failure of our loan. But fortunately this colony will not suffer by it. The loan has been underwritten, and we shall get the money all the same. We shall suffer no inconvenience, and public works, land for settlement loans to local bodies will go on just as before. But the action of the English money-lender in this, as well as in the case oi Australia is an eye-opener fox us. Only a few months have elapsed since, our sons were shedding ' their blood on the battlefields of South Africa, ostensibly in the cause of the Empire but actually in the cause of the financiers, many of whom belong to the London money market. They were the Uitlanders, it was in theninterest that the British Government made war on the Boers, and it was to fight their battles that we sent our sons to South Africa where it is admitted they have been of great value, and their prowess and bravery are attested by Bothasberg and New Zealand Hill. And what is .the result' Scarcely has their blood dried on the veldt, or their graves crown green when a combination of financial swindlers in whose cause •they have fought and died, try to ruin our credit by means of a purchasable press, sovthat they might rob us by getting our loans cheap. They have taken advantage of the misfortunes of Australia to ruin her credit and owing to our geographical position we too must suffer. This is well calculated to knock jjome of the patriotic enthusiasm put; oj.us. and.it IS |uite possrWe tHa* if the English

financiers require assistance again we shall not be so ready to go to their aid. This is the sort of treatment that puts a strain on loyalty, but it ! is not only in this respect that we have been badly treated. As for the failure of our loan this year, there has -never been a time in . the history of the colony in which we J were in a better position to borrow. I During last election we had occasion to look into these things, and it will be remembered that we proved that our finances were in an exceedingly sound condition—never better in the whole history of the colony.. In 1890, that is practically the year in which the Government came into office (January 1891), our annual charge for interest and sinking fund was £1,752,020 ; last year it was £1722,811, or £30,000 less. In the twelve years intervening we borrowed £14,000,000, but our annual expenditure decreased by £30,000. Surely that is a result that proves our finances are exceptionally sound, but there is stll better evidence of it. In 1895 the interest on our loans and the sinkiog fund absorbed 39 per per cent, of our revenue ; last year I only 29 per cent, of it sufficed. Thus it took ten per cent, less of our revenue to pay interest and sinking fund last year than it did seven years ago, and ten per cent, on a revenue of £6,000,000 means a saving of £600,000 a year. We are, therefore, £600,000 a year better off now than we were seven years ago, notwithstanding that we took of! taxation equal to about £400,000. Now that means that we could borrow £20,000,000 more than we have done and be in no worse position than we were in 1895, and bearing this in mind, together with the fact thatnever in the whole history of the colony have our prospects been brighter, we can only feel astounded at our loan being questioned at all. Our finances, as we have shown, have never been so sound, wc have shown enormous surpluses year after year ; our harvest is rich and bountiful, never have prices of all our products been so high at the same time; every element combines to indicate prosperity, real, true, and abiding, even to the fact that during the last seven years our people increased their purchasing power by over 65 per cent., and yet our <oan is a failure. As we have said already we shall not . suffer the money will be provided a by the underwriters, but our credit is injured owing to the accumulation of the misrepresentations of certain kinds of bipeds that neglect cleaning their own nests, and we regret to see that some of them have already .commenced'to gloat over it. It is really sad that this should be -;o, but every country is cursed with traitors, and wc cannot expect to escape the curse.