CONSOLIDATION.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XII, Issue 945, 7 November 1868, Page 2

CONSOLIDATION.

The gift of seeing ourselves as others see us is valuable not only for its helping Jo. take the concet out of us, but sometimes for enabling us to estemate aright the man and things around us. We often depreciate what is good because it is near and overvalue what is only so. so because it is faraway what an outcry was made by In’. Featherston and his following against the Consolidation policy of tlie Stafford Government : it was bad morally—it was rather bad financially. Wall people at a distance do not seem to think so. Consolidation certainly meets with more favour in other countries than it has met with in New Zealand. Victorian politicians of some eminence are reconmending it as the bust policy to be pursued for the liquidation of a public debt which now amounts to twelve millions. In a recent debate on the subject, Mr O’Shanassy is reported to have spoken as follows :—‘He thought the time had arrived when they might consolidate all their laans, and when steps might be taken for the establishment of a sinking fund, under, proper guarantees, in ordeer to put their credit on an improved footing, in the month of May last, the New Zealand government adopted a system by which they proposed to paj off six millions of debt m thirty-four years, by a sinking of 1 per cent. The moment they did that, their debentures were quoted nearly as high in the English market as Victorian debentures. Ihe Press of Tasmania, much occupied of late with public debt and difficulties, has taken up the same idea. The public debt of that colony amounts to one million, with a prospect of another at no distant time ; but small as the debt may seem, it presses heavily on a not very prosperous population of one hundred thouaand. Consolidation and Sinking Fund have already beenapplied, in some degree, to the public Liabilities of Tasmania; and the results have been so favourable, apparently, as to precure for that line of policy the sanction of Tasmania opinion. The chief difficulty in the way of consolidation the whole debt lies m the fact that a sinking fund of one per cent, is not easily provided for ; a matter which will tax the ingenuity of the Treasurer and his colleagues. The financial experiment made by New Zealand is evidently attracting attention both at home and in the colonies. That might have been expected ; for it has at least secured the confidence of caditlists in London, and exalted the public credit of the Colony. ___