A LETTER FROM THE AGENTGENERAL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4755, 27 July 1883, Page 4

A LETTER FROM THE AGEN TGENERAL.

; ♦ [PBB FBBBS ABBOOIATIOH.] DtJNKDIff, July 26. In reply to a resolution from the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce, thanking the AgentGoneral for the success attending the floating of the one million loan, for his pamphlet on New Zaaland finance, and for his exertions re direct steam servioe, Sir Dillon Bell haß forwarded the following letter to the Chamber :— "London, June 4, 1883. " Sir, — I hare to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, enclosing the resolution of the Chamber of Commerce, and I beg to return my grateful thanki to the Chamber for the honour they hare done me. The sucoeas of the million loan very likely appeared all the greater by companion with the last financial operation we had to make. That the Colony should have been able only three years after giving £120 of stock for £97 10a in cash, to place a four per cent loan at £98 12s 63, shows how much its credit had risen in the time. lam very grateful for the Chamber's appreciation of my own part in the business, but you may depend upon it that the real secret of your success was the confidence of investors in our good faith, and their belief in our determination to maintain eoonomy and sufficient taxation as the true security of our finance As to the steam question, I confess to having devoted more pains to it than to anything else, exoept finance. We can hardly measure the good that would come to us from a properly established direct line, bub the indispensable condition of any permanence in such an enterprise is that it should pay* which means that we must be willing to give reasonable help to ie at first, though wo ought to allow no monopoly of our trade to be s*fc up. With regard to my paper on the publio debts, I could not see without great pleasure how widely attention beoance attracted to the wonderful facts I had attempted to record. A few minor points were disputed at the time with some aoerbity, and I was prevented by a tedious illness from defending them, as I \ should have liked, but it will not be long before 1 vindicate in a second edition, the conclusions which had been impugned. I thank the Chamber heartily for a recognition which is now to be added to the generous support and confidence I have always received from the Government. Ihe time of my engage* ment is paising fast away, and my sucoesso* will soon be ohosen* I trust that it rate/ be his giyjd t^tuns, a« it has been mme t to got.

in what must always be a difficult and laborious work, not only the approval of tbe Ministers, but kindness and enoouragement outside the offioial cirolei, such as the Ohamber have extended to me."