The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1879.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 319, 19 November 1879, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1879.

The delay in floating the five million loan is not an unmixed evil, if that delay causes us to look the present condition of the Colony fairly in the face, and provide suitable measures for the future, The sooner the present system of public works expenditure ceases, except in so far as completing necessary works are concerned, the better it will be for the Colony. It is to be hoped that this present loan is the last that Parliament will authorise until the public revenue meets fairly the public expenditure. Then we can make a new departure, and construct railways through every county in the Colony, if such is the wish of the people at large. What we have now to look at is the present position, The prospect is certainly not a cheering one. With wool low, and our farmers unable to sell their produce, other than wheat (a most deteriorating crop), with heavy taxation staring us in the face, and the likelihood of a great number of men being out of employment—with these heavy items against us, what are we to do 1 There are two courses open, The one is to go on as we have been doing, andborrowmore and more, until we find the public expenditure and annual ini lerest so vastly in excess of the revenue that it is impossible to make the two balance; the other, to turn to the true methods for advancing the permanent prosperity of the country-methods which have been totally neglected during the past maelstrom of public works. Those methods are-lst, the encouragement of foreign commerce, and, 2nd, the encouragement of home manufactures. These, and these alone, are the only means of disposing of the increased production which the Public Works policy has brought about. Fortunately for New Zealand, she can set about doing these things, and righting, Borne-

what, the past years of wasteful expenditure. We have before now advocated the desirability of encouraging commercial relations between New Zealand and the neighboring tropical countries, viz., Queensland, New Caledonia, and Fiji, in order to dispose of our stores, of beef, mutton, flour, biscuits, dairy produce, ic., <k, and get in exchange the productions ot those tropical countries-sugar, cotton, coffee, fibre, oil, and the like. But we have not made special allusion to home manufactures. It is evident that we have the true basis of manufacturing prosperity—a cheap food supply—and given this, the manufactures follow. Victoria, with all its efforts at protection, does not possess this basis, No Australian colony possesses it in a like degree with New Zealand, and New Zealand is bound to become a manufacturing country,—for where food is cheap men and women will congregate, and "where men and women congregate work results, .especially in a temperato or cold country. Possessing, then, this basis, fit is the duty of the Government to foster the super-structure, not by going the length of Victoria, but by fostering those productions and manufactures which we can best produce and manufacture. Our enormous debt already makes us protectionists. The ad valorem duty imposed upon many articles, partly to meet the interest charge of our railways, is sufficiently large to leave a small margin of profit for colonial manufacture. Our cheap food supply will do the rest. Add to home manufactures foreign commerce; work up such tropical produce as cotton, fibre, oil, and the like, into the numerous manufactures in which these productions are worked, and the true prosperity of the country will be attained. Manufactures are certain to succeed in the end where the supply of food is cheap. It is the American cheap supply of food, and not her protective policy, that is advancing her manufactures. Similarly the case is with us. We can produce the cheap food, and more than wo want; but we cannot export that surplus, because we are too far away to compete with other supplies. But if we turn that surplus into broadcloth, blankets, linen, rope, soap, candles, Ac., Ac, the case is different. Australasia, China, and the Pacific are our markets, and time will yet show that what is possible for Victoria is quite possible for New Zealand,