THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 681, 29 July 1870, Page 2

THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

• . ■ ■ ■ ♦ The following is that portion of Mr Fitz* herbert's speeoh which relates to immigration and public works:— With respect to this question of immigration, I do not- hesitate to say that it is one of the greatest problems of the present day, than which there is no question of peace or war, starvation or plenty, civilization or barbarism, of larger or more profound interest. And we form in New Zealand no small item in that problem, and for this reason, that we are nearly about the last oountry within the temperate zone which remains yet uninhabited, ; l say uninhabited, for how else can it be regarded, seeing that we have only a population of a. quarter of a million, including the infant born yesterday to make up the number. To call this an inhabited country ~ is simply trifling with terms. After all that has been said upon the subject of immigration, it would be useless to enter upon details, nor indeed is the present the fitting opportunity. 1 have listened with great attention po the remarks of my hon. friend the member for Selwyn, who threw out some very practical and sensible suggestions in his evidently carefully-prepared address. I would, however, refer to the fallacy of tke argument <>f the hon. member . when he talks of . in|rpducing immigrants for the purpose of reducing the price of labour. In my humble opinion a greater mistake could not have been conceived. The millions of immigrants who have gone to the United States, and made the glory, the wealth, aye, and gained the great military achievements of those States, instead of causing the price of labour to come down have caused it. to keep up. What is the effect of bringing in people to a country ? What does it imply ? In this country, for" instance; we have- beef," and mutton, and flour, in great abundance,~in fact they are absolutely drugs, and we doiiofc know what to do with them. We have boiling down' establishments here, and potting establishments there, and we are trying to get protective duties upon our grain, and fwe are trying' all sorts of devices. There is one simple device, viz.," bringing, people to cqnsume those articles. The price of labour will then go up, the price of provisions wUI go up contemporaneously,- and the people Trill be able to pay a higher price. There are. other weighty considerations to be borne in- mind —colonisation is of the deepest importance in a political sense. It was impossible, in small communities, to have anything like pubiio opinion; no true current of public opinion, could be possibly got up in a sparsely peopled country. Then as to the question of our being a united and independent people, we should, as prudent men about to be cast adrift amongst the nations of the world, endeavour to increase our numbers, so that we may not become the spoil of the first burglar jwho passes by. Colonisation is also important in a social point of view." Iff is impossible that the various relations of life, which are the attributes of civilisation, can possibly go on where there are not means of carrying out this civilisation, and where every man in the country has to do all sorts of incongruous work. Then, if you want to have education advance, you must bring in „ people. You will not without it educate your children as they ought to be educated ; you will have a deficient and imperfect education

— -"an -education without-' the elements - r of emulation sufficient to make it active and interesting unless you increase the population. Your children cannot learn and never will learn as they should and could, because there is not a sufficient momentum of learning There are also other considerations which men charged with the great duty of representing the people on this great subject should .bear in . mind. Until you increase your population you cannot expect taxation, :to Jbe reduced ; not. will Native wars entirely, cease until you have added largely to the number of the Europeans. I wish to add a few words respecting immigrants themselves. When I was at home I took the deepest interest, in the subject of immigration, and . I had interviews with all kinds of persons — guardians. of the poor, philanthropists, and men of eminence. I do not, think there is a general wish to get rid of the paupers in the old country, and send them to the colonies ; there exists a more enlightened, a truer, and grander spirit animating the greater number of those who take &n active interest in these matters at home. There are many suffering people there who may be described as being between wind and water, who would make just as good colonists as any here— people who have struggled and are struggling against 'poverty and a variety of adverse circumstances—who find it difficult to support their families, and are struggling on perhaps upon a pittance, I know of no people who are likely to be better colonists than those people,— -men who have struggled for the love of independence that they may keep out of 4he workhouse, and not be indebted to any one for charity. Amongst these there are noany who could be induced to emigrate on terms that would be easy for the colony. And I have yet to learn, according to my Experience in New Zealand, that such men do not constitute a good class of settlers. It fa not always your strong navvie, six feet high with hie brawny arms, that turns out the best colonist when he comes to New Zealand ; because these Btrong men can always get high wages at homeland they do not make the best settlers or the best farmers when they come here. There is one point which I regard as of great importance, viz., that if we establish a system of immigration, the stream should be continuous. The quantity of this immigration at any given time is to be regulated by our capacity for administration. It ■is not enough to bring out people here, ,«nd to drop them down anywhere in the country; they must be established and settled. If I thought that a system would be -devised of a grand scheme of public works for the sake of finding employment for a number of strangers who would be brought here, I would oppose it. I say that the idea of bringing out people as immigrants, with the view of their obtaining employment upon publio works in the colony, is the most preposterous idea that was ever entertained. It would be a blot upon our administration if we permitted any such scheme to be carried out, which could have no other effect than that of utterly demoralising and corrupting the whole population. It would be monstrous that in a country like this the immigrant should look to employment on public works for a permanent livelihood — • panem et circensea. The pages of the past tell us that was the ruin of one empire. But if such a system be a disease incidental to the mature age of nations, nothing could produce such a state of things in a young country but culpable incapacity of administration. What "do we mean by settlement ? I come here to a question of vital importance. The land question is the great theme. I admit the problem is not an easy one to solve. The problem in ■ New Zealand has generally been complicated -by many difficulties. It is no use to quarrel with that, but we must, by intelligence and -discrimination, try to solve, that problem. The land must be opened. for. the people. We v hate a great, many anomalies in this country .with regard to the land, but the time ia now come when we must consider them with a Tiew to simplification. It matters not how much we can understand' these things, ourselves here on the spot ; they must, also be -understood by the outside world. This country, which differs widely from the neigh- , bouring colonies, — notwithstanding their .many advantages and great wealth, they have not the climate that we have— is destined to become a populous country, .and the sooner we learn how best to settle a population the better. . I think w!e r ought to have the land Belling departments more uniformly organized. Ido not mean to say that you are to have, one uniform price .-, for land in all parts of the colony, but ah [ effort should be made to assimilate the prices and administration 00 far as it can be done. t But on what terms and conditions are you to fettle your immigrants? Are you to give them .the land? Undoubtedly not. That . has been tried and failed. If your land laws were more liberal and less complicated, I think you would find that many persons ' would come to' this country, and would purr chase. the land . out of their i own resources, ' r and would become useful settlers. I also " believe that a system of deferred payments, through the intervention of associations, ' might be safely and usefully adopted. I now come to the question of public works. I pur- ' .pose to offer a few observations upon the scheme in reference to its magnitude, in ...reference to its administration, and in reference to the data upon which the proposals for borrowing are based. In the first place I will state why I do not fear the magnitude of . the scheme. It is true that we owe seven millions of money, .and it would be quite right that we should take into consideration the Urge amount owing by private borrowers, and which has been variously estimated at • from three to four millions. Putting these together, we may say that they amount to ten or eleven millions. I admit it is a very large sum. With reference to the public debt, I will only say that it is proved that up to the present time we have paid our interest and sinking fund, not out of borrowed

money, but out of. oar ordinary revenue. And I, Bay that the British lender will con tinue inclined to lend to us bo long as he find we pay our interest punctually and every year redeem so much of our debtß ; notwithstanding that he knows how to give himself proper airs, how to make the getting of the money seem difficult, and how sometimes to tie jip his purse strings against us. Still, I say he is glad to lend to us, for be has always been paid, and has been paid a high rate of inter eßtr for -what he has lent us. By our bringing into the coujutry a number of people, the security of the creditor will be still further improved. We have a very great estate, and we have aa yet only scratched it— have done very little more than some men who set up as agriculturists do to the land they own. -The riches of. this estate of ours it is impossible to tell— that they are great, almost illimitable, we know ; and yet at every point they remain hidden, because at no point do we dare to enter upon more than their superficial development. Any man would, indeed, be rash to enter into any undertaking that required a steady continuous application of labour, for his doinsr so, as things are, would end in certain ruin. We have here an estate of ■some sixty-five million acres, as compared with about seventy-four million acres in Great Britain and Ireland. If it is true that a country with an acreage which exceeds ours by only, one-seventh, carries, a .population, of I twenty -seven or .twenty-eight millions, while we hate only some quarter of a million souls— that we have a country altogether surpassing Great Britain in climate — abounding in streams and rich in fertility— with simply untold mineral wealth— why, I say that there is nothing in the magnitude of the scheme now submitted which should at all alarm us. As to the administration of the scheme, I understand that the Government, in accordance with the terms of the policy to which I have referred, intend to work the institutions of the country as they are, but Intend to keep -the control in their own hands. And | I say that, with regard to the grand functions of administration, this House has its duty to perform. We have no right to enter into scheme of this magnitude, nor into one of half or quarter the magnitude, unless we are prepared and determined to maintain our constitutional hold, to see everything for ourselves, and to be assured of every step before it is taken. lam now going to speak upon a subject on which I ask the attention of the hon. gentleman the Colonial Treasurer, j I refer to the data upon which he rests his application for money. He wants to induce British capitalists to take up a scheme involving large sums of money, and he puts forward what may be called his prospectus. How does he set to work? He departs from all ordinary rules. I never before heard of any public works for which a loan was asked in the money market, with respect to which there was not supplied, I will not say abundant information, but information down to the minutest pomt — absolutely sustained, perfect, unanswerable; so that there could not be applied to any part of it, regard being preserved to a correct use of language, the term " conjectural." But here there is put forward what is, pure and simple, the merest conjectural information that can possibly he conceived. Upon such information is supported an application for a loan of several millions of money.' We had no idea last session that these large proposals were to be made to us ; and I say that last October, when the Colonial Treasurer began to mature the scheme—or so soon as Ministers had made up their minds with regard to it — the Government should, through the Commissioners, have brought out competent engineers and surveyors. After taking upon themselves the great responsibility of launching this scheme, it would surely have been .but a small responsibility to have incurred the expense of bringing out from Great Britain such gentlemen as I have indicated. So to have done would bare been only to act the part of prudent men. Those engineers and surveyors, under the instructions of the Government — with the assistance of men of capacity and of local knowledge— in conference also with the different dents— should have gone through the length and breadth of the land, so as to have brought before the Houbb such well arranged and accurate details as to the proposed railways, based on measurements and not originating in guess, as would have satisfied the minds of the mpst captious and the most cautious. This is tfeo poiat on whicbrl think the Colonial Treasurer has committed a very grave mistake*. I think of the effect which that mistake will have at home. lam not alarmed at the magnitude of the scheme, nor at the nature of the proposals; but I do feel alarm from the shape in which, lacking such support as I have indicated, the scheme will appear at home, and the great disadvantage under which— unnecessarily, I think— we shall go to the British capitalists. I further point out an unfortunate discrepancy in the statement. What we read 'in its last paragraph is not consistent with what we find in the calculation of expenditure and receipts at page 17 respecting the railways. There we find expenditure during the tenth year estimated at £444,125, and receipts at £465,000, showsomething like £21,000 to the good, whilst in the concluding paragraph we are told that the proposals will entail enormous burdens on posterity. The points to which I have referred are such as will be " spotted " so soon as the statement is read in England. Unfortunately, the Colonial Treasurer says, " I am going to put before you a conjectural sketch," and so on. The sketch is very clever, considering the materials at hand, and the thing is very forcibly s.tated, but I do not place any reliance upon the calculations. To challenge the hon. gentleman as to how his calculations would turn out, would be something like offering a bet on an event to take place a hundred years hence ; and I will only state generally, as the result of my knowledge and observation,, that I believe there will be no such results secured as are set

.down- in- these calculations.. We do not j expect them, Sir, so to speak; the scheme does not want them: ~ A railway does not pay as a railway ; it is not the direct, hut the indirect, returns that we expect. I am sure the .Colonial Treasurer will acknowledge as a true axiom that the real security is not in the returns of the railway, but in that which is the real security of the public creditor, that which is 'the justification for the country going into such works instead of private companies, prosperity to every homestead. Whilst, therefore, a railway may not be paying the interest, the advantage gained by the country at large and by individuals would be more than a return. _ The regret is that we have not been furnished with such information as in tbe case with regard to telegraph extension. Under the bead of. telegraph extension, you will find the number of miles, the number of poles, the number of stations, and all particulars; and if we had as full information with regard to the proposed railways, then we might safely go on. The whole thing, however, is one of administration. lam prepared to lend my earnest aid to the Government to turn out the scheme in the best manner in which it is possible, and- I trust the Colonial -Treasurer will accept my remarks, in pointing out what I have done, in. the spirit in which I have made them, .and that the Government will not abandon this great scheme, which I truly belieye, if perfected and regulated, and properly administered, will be the means of giving new life to the colony.