A LARGE BLUNDER IN ACCOUNTS.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 572, 26 October 1869, Page 2

A LARGE BLUNDER IN ACCOUNTS.

(From the Colonist.) We ought to ask pardon for omitting until now to notice a singular blunder in Mr Curtis's figures, a blunder in the elementary part of simple arithmetic, which is perfectly astonishing in a business man. It is only an error of at least £40,000, and it may be much more. It was owing to the fact of a second reference to his antenomination speech, which, we believe, is in the hands of all the electors, that the point was noticed. In the first column of the second page of his circular addressed to the electors, appear the following sentences: — " I will explain the expenditure on the West Coast during the three last financial years, before which period we had expended £55,000, and received £15,000, thus leaving a balance against them of £40,000. Since then, that is to say for the three years ending March 31, 1869, we have received as our total revenue £300,000, and expended out of it £155,000 on the West Coast alone; I must also add a smail share of the Government expenditure, say for Superintendent, Engineer, Provincial Council, &c, £SOOO a-year, which for the three years would be £15,000. Then I add the £40,000 they owed us, which will make £210,000 expended on and fur the West Coast out of £300,000, received for the ivhole Province."

By no means. There is a wonderful omission. The West Coast, " out of the £300,000 received " in revenue in the three years, had only £170,000 spent on it. The £55,000 was expended in various sums, extending over a period of four or five years, a large part of which, we believe—but at this moment we are not certain if Mr Curtis has included this—was spent in making unserviceable roads, hurried on by an unreasoning outcry and pressure to employ immediately, before there were proper surveys, the workmen who lost employment when the Dun Mountain works were finished. There is no escaping from the error, for although it is not reported in the circular, yet Mr Curtis went further, and stated, as reported in the Colonist next morning, that out of a total revenue of£300,000,—"only £90,000, or £30,000 a year, went to the Nelson portion of the the Province, while £70,000 per annum went to the West Coast Goldfields."

Mr Curtis has repeatedly argued that the revenue of the Province, come from what district it might, belongs to the whole province, to be expended wherever it was necessary ; but in this calculation he throws that principle entirely overboard. He makes the West Coast a debtor of £55,000, expended over, at least, four or five years, and gives it credit for only £15,000 received from it j but in utter negation of his own principle he refuses to allow it any share of the gross revenue of the whole Province during these years. To have been fair, Mr Curtis should have set down the total receipts for at least five years, and then the comparison would have been more just. He acknowledges an income from the West Coast of £15,000, for which he allows no participation in the gross revenue for the period during which that sum accrued. This is bad accounting, an error wlrch would appal any ordinary bookkeeper.