Wellington Independent. "NOTHING EXTENUATE; NOR SET DOWN AUGHT IN MALICE." TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 1869.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXIV, Issue 2852, 20 April 1869, Page 2

Wellington Independent. "NOTHING EXTENUATE; NOR SET DOWN AUGHT IN MALICE." TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 1869.

The questions are continually asked — What is the condition of the province ? How are our country settlers getting on, are they still as prosperous as of yore ; or do they feel the existing financial depression to the same extent as the traders feel it in town ? We fear that the answers which can be given to those questions will be the very reverse of satisfactory. The country settlers in this province are by no means well off. The large run-holders who have borrowed money to buy land and paid a guinea each for sheep, now find when wool has fallen some 4<o per cent, in value, and sheep will not fetch more than half-a-crown each, that it is by no means easy to solve the problem of making a decent income and at the same time paying interest on loans. The middle class settler who has paid for his freehold in cash, fares somewhat differently ; he grows rouch of what is needed for family consumption ; he pays nothing for butter, potatoes, meat, vegetables and milk ; so that practically he is to a great extent self-supporting. Tet even in this case the pinch of the hard times is sorely felt. Our country friend's wool fetches little more than half the price that it did a couple of years ago ; butter, which used to realise one and sixpence a pound is now readily sold at tenpence, whils stock and horses fetch nothing like the prices which they did in the palmy days of 1863 and IS6I. And descending lower in the social scale we find that the same reasoning holds good in the case of the small country settler ; the man who with a few acres of land, contrives to maintain a wife and a few children. It is true that they have plenty to eat, because pigs and potatoes and vegetables may be had in abundance ; still they are all more or less " hard up " and there is very little indeed of the circulating medium in tho shape of notes or gold to be found amongst them. The head of the family has in many cases to forego his nocturnal nightcap of spirituous comfort ; the girls only get a new dress on a rare occasion ; the boys cannot ride about on well-bred hacks as of yore ; while the matronly head of the establishment, sighs for the good old days when she could go and enjoy that chief delight of a woman, shopping and making bargains. This reasoning indeed holds good of every class in society both in town and country. Everybody feels the depression, everybody is short of ready money ; everybody feels that real estate can only be disposed of at a terrible sacrifice. And the worst of it is that in the country this feeling has had a demoralising effect ; people have ceased in some instances to be conscious of the moral obligation which rests upon them to pay to every man what they owe. They shuffle and prevaricate, and repudiate just claims, instead of paying them. They in many instances keep up the old scale of expenditure on lessened means, and are' thus driven to all those wretched shifts and subterfuges to -which embarassed people resort. There are indeed many casea in which by sheer misfortune people have been rendered poor and embarrassed, but still there are many others, in which it is sought by a dishonest pretence to plead the hard times for the purpose of evading engagements which could readily enough be met. It is not easy to point out the remedy for this sad state of affairs. In time no doubt the evil will work out its own cure. The big runs and farms purchased with I borrowed money will be split up into

small freeholds bought -with cash and held i by men who really do their own work. Sheep farming, stock raising, agriculture, and a host of kindred pursuits will pay — and pay well too — in New Zealand, to those who turn up their shirt sleeves and work heartily at them. Then if the country and province become more selfsupporting ; if we manufacture our own articles of domestic consumption ; a large field would be created for the employment of labour, and the money which is now screwed out of the people on the fourth of every month, to be sent to the colonial exporter in England, would be retained in the country to circulate from hand to hand. Besides this, much might be done to check the expenditure of the government. We are fairly embarked on a native war, which costs some £900 a-day, but it migh^. be a subject of enquiry whether operations could notbe efficiently carried on at a less expenditure. We are of opinion that a small force, specially trained to the work of bush fighting, would do better than a large one containing many inefficient men. We are gradually getting such a force, but the task is a work of time, and it is needless to attack the government for not doing that which it is impossible to be done at once.

Above all things, a constant watch and a continuous check should be exercised over the financial expenditure of the colony. Tear by year the number of officials seems to increase, and though reductions are continually heard of, yet somehow the estimates still swell. For a small colony with a limited population, it is amazing the number of paid officials which New Zealand possesses. It is ridden to death by over government. It is bleeding to death owing to the price which it pays for it ; and in trnth it is but badly governed after all. "We want some honest man with a single purpose, to arise in our midst and devote his whole efforts to reduce this terrible incubus of officialism which weighs down the colonists. If it is to be borne any longer then taxation must be increased, and that is almost too large already to be borne. If an effort in the direction we have indicated be not made, and made quickly, the colony may do — what many of its settlers are already doing — declare insolvent and file its schedule. When so many individuals of every class are going through the Court, it is clear that there is something rotten in the country to which they belong.