Wellington Independent FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 1871.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3239, 30 June 1871, Page 2

Wellington Independent FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 1871.

Tf the number of harbors is a great advantage in a new country, enabling settlement to proceed simultaneously from many points, there can be no question that they add very considerably to the difficulty and expense of collecting Customs duties. The official returns of the neighboring colonies show that there are in Victoria eight ports and six border stations, and in New South Wales eleven ports and six border stations. The great bulk of the Customs revenue, however, is collected at their respective capitals, Melbourne and Sydney ; and practically, for the purposes of comparison with New Zealand, these colonies may be said to have each only one principal port. Iv Now Zealand there are twenty-eight ports (or as many as there are in Scotland), aod eight preventive stations. Everyone, therefore, will be prepared to expect that the expense of collection must necessarily be greater here than in ! either of these colonies. A general who has only one citadel to garrison can do &o at a smaller expenditure of money, and with a much smaller complement of men, than one who has got twenty-eight, and these, too, widely scattered. Nor will it be disputed that a department fully equipped for doing the Customs business of a ' country with SoO,OOO inhabitants will be able, with very little more expense, to do the business of one three times as populous ; in other words, that population, while it directly affects the Customs receipts, does not in the same ratio affect the departmental expenditure. This we illustrated lately by statistics from the Telegraphic Department, showing that while the wires had increased by hundreds of miles, and the receipts by thousands of pounds, the expense of the general management had rather diminished than increased. The same is true of the Customs or any other public department. If New Zealand had its population trebled, and if the new population were concentrated as in Victoria, the additional cost of collecting thegreatly additional Customs revenue would be very small indeed. To expect, therefore, that a colony with a scattered population — one-third of the comparativelyconcentratedpopulationof its neigh bor, should be able to show the same ratio ' of departmental expenditure to receipts, would be an obvious injustice. But not only has Victoria three times the popu lation — three times the number of Cus toms 1 customers ; but of that population , a greater proportion consumes those articles paying the highest and most easily collected duties — or,, to continue the figure, her Customs' customers " go \ in" for the articles which leave the widest f margin of profit, and cause the least > loss of time and trouble. The truth • of the latter assertion will appear, P if we select that portion of New Zeaand containing a population most re« ,' sembling that of Victoria, viz., West--3 land, and compare it with another in \ which the same element does not obtain, [ say Canterbury. Now the population of . Westland is 15,357 and its Custom's • contribution is '£94,276 13s sd, while

the population of Canterbury is 46,801, and its contribution only £92,349 19s Id — the expense of collection being I nearly the same in both. Thus a greater revenue may accrue from a small population consuming a large proportion of high duty-paying articles, than from a larger, whose habits and circumstances lead them to consume a less proportion of them. "We need scarcely say that the items in our tariff which contribute most, and most easily, to the revenue, are spirits, wine, ale, and tobacco ; nor will any one dispute that it is to^ the greater relative consumption of these by the Victoria — resembling Westland, that its contribution to the revenue stands so high. From the returns iv the Appendix No. 2 to the Journal of the House of Eepresentatives, 1870, we find that the gross total of the Customs revenue for the year 1809 was £823,500 13s 3d ; and of this, spirits yielded £333,479 0s lid ; wine, £30,987 33 Id ; ale, £17,073 13s Id ; and, tobacco, £88,488 5s Od— these four articles yielding together £470,028 8s 7d, or about 58 per cent. It may be well, by the way, for many who are ruining themselves •by indulgence in these luxuries, and who are often the loudest grumblers about taxes, to note how much of the burden of taxation is self-imposed. But, to return to our comparison, not only then is Victoria more favorably situated geographically, having practically only one port to our twenty-eight ; having a population three times larger, and of these a greater proportion of consumers of high duty- paying articles ; but the cost of living for officers engaged in the collection of her customs revenue is considerably less thun in New Zealand. Taking all these considerations into account, we need not be surprised if the amount paid for salaries in New Zealand is greater than that paid in Victoria; but what do we find? The Victoria Estimates for 1670 are before us, and we see that in Victoria the salaries of the Customs classified officers, for 1870, amounted to £42,887; and unclassified officers, £4,000 ; and, if we include the Distilleries Department, £3,000 more, making a total of about £50,000 ; while the total amount of salaries to Customs' officials in New Zealand, including extra tide-waiters, and the distilleries staff, is only £34,152 for the same year ! But the best test that can be applied for the purpose of comparing the expenditure on our Customs department with that of Victoria, is that employed by Mr Stafford in the House last session. He remarked (See Hansard VII, 353): " With regard to the whole Customs expenditure, it was wonderfully cheap. They had, he believed, thirty-four or thirty-five ports, and they collected their Customs ! for one per cent, less than Victoria, with | only three ports, and where the main | business was done at one port ! The ' service was efficient, and was continuing to improve from day to day." What, then, it may be asked, does it cost per i cent, to collect our Customs revenue ? In 18G6, it cost 4£ per cent., including the gold duty, and exclusive of the gold j duty, 5t per cent. In 1870, the expense was reduced to 4 per cent., and exclusive of gold duty, pilotage, &c, (that is to say, in collecting the Customs duties alone 1 ,) 4£ per cent. It may, perhaps, be not generally known that large reductions have been made in the Customs staff since the department was placed under the control and inspection of a permanent head. A reference to a return laid before the General Assembly in 1867, and printed in the Appendix to the Journals, shows that, for the year ending 30th June, 1867, the services of no fewer than 42 officers were dispensed with ; and a similar return the following year shows that a further reduction was made — 22 officers being then dispensed with. No returns appear in the Appendices for 1809 and 1870, but we understand that considerable reductions have also been made during these years. The Victorian estimates shosv that the salaries there paid are considerably higher than our Customs officers receive ; and the same is the case, we believe, with regard to New South Wales. One or two illustrations from the Victorian estimates may be interesting : — Collector of Customs (only one required, by the way), £900; chief cleric, £600 ; clerk and receiver, £600 ; warehouse keepers, three, at £485 ; clerks— one at £485, two at £448 6s Bd, seven at £350, one at £300, one at £200, &o. Then, to take outdoor officials, we haye — two landing surveyors at £600; one assistant ditto, £553 6s 8d ; nine landing waiters at £485, one at £400 13s 4d, four at £350. Or, to make the comparison still closer : while the lowest paid land* ing waiter iv Victoria has a salary of £359, and an assistant clerk allowed him, the highest paid landing waiter, who does the same duty (with no assistance), in New Zealand receives only £200 ! Thus it will be seen that our Customs Department, heavily handicapped as it is, from the remoteness and number of our ports, outstrips in the race of economy and efficiency its Victorian rival ; and that " the knife" has been so applied already that any further reduction seems to us impossible, if the same zeal and efficiency displayed by its officers in the past are to bo continued. The only change that we can soo do- ■ suable is to make their salaries a colonial instead of a' provincial charge, and so prevent deserving officers, who, from their very experience, may be sent to new ports, hi comparatively poor provinces, to use a Hibernianism, ". ascending downwards." The cost of collecting was a proper provincial charge so long as the Customs receipts were regarded as provincial revenue ; but now that the provinces are paid according to their population, and not to their receipts, there seems to us no reason for continuing a system which, it is easy to "see, must be productive of many difficulties and unpleasant anomalies in the working of the department. Bufc whatever maybe done in the new Parliament in this direction, we trust that no further reductions will bo rashly made either in the

numbers or salaries of a class of Civil servants, many of whom, we take leave to think, are already overworked and underpaid. The most cheese-paring legislator, at all events, will find no pretext for employing " the knife," from the published statistics either of Great Britain or any of her colonies.