PROSPECTS OF THE REVENUE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 274, 1 May 1873, Page 6

PROSPECTS OF THE REVENUE.

The " Gazette " published in Wellington on the 27th ult. contains tables showing in detail the revenue of the colony under its several heads, and the provinces" in which it was collected during the September and December quarters of 1872. An examination of these tables is not calculated to reassure our minds "with reference to the prospect of a satisfactory balance sheet being presented to Parliament when the next Financial Statement is brought down. . Mr. Yogel, it will be remembered, last session estimated the revenue for 1872-73 at the sum of L 1,076,000, showing an increase of L 68,585 over the revenue of 1871-2- At the close of the September quarter there appeared to be a very fair prospect of this estimate being verified. The receipts for the quarter were L 260,462, and though, if that sum were to be taken as the average for the year, the total would have had to be calculated at gomething between L 30,000 and L40,00|) less than the estimate, there appeared to v be good grounds for anticipating . that *it might be looked upon as less than the average. It was the case that during the two quarters preceding the revenue had been on the increase, and it bade fair, as far as casual observers could judge, to be on the increase for some time to come. This expectation, however, has not been realized. On the contrary, the revenue collected during the December quarter shows a very considerable falling off as compared with that collected during the September quarter. The latter, as remarked above, was L 260,462, whereaathe former was only L 233,469. The falling off, apparently, does not flow from any isolated cause of a local nature. It is general all over the colony. In every province less goods were imported, fewer letters were despatched, fewer telegraphic messages sent, fewer deeds registered, and so on, during the December quarter than had been during the September quarter. • This, of course, gives us additional ground for fearing that the process of declension, once begun, is not likely to be very suddenly reversed, that the receipts of the next two quarters, if they do not fall below those of the last quarter of 1872, are not at any rate likely very greatly to exceed them. Should they simply not exceed them, the receipts for the year would fall about LIOO,OOO below Mr, Vogel's estimate. We need hardly remark that such a result as this would mean an immediate necessity for tolerablyheavy direct taxation. — ■" Hawkes BayHerald."