AUSTRALIA.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 95, 15 June 1877, Page 3

AUSTRALIA.

(Per s.s. Wakatipu, via Wellington.) Sydney. Sir W. Jervois and Col. Scratchley left for Melbourne on June 6. The Sydney Morning Herald says that it had the cablegram re Prince Gortschakoff accompanying the Emporor to Ployesti repeated, when it found that it should read—" Given rise to peace rumours." [The original telegram read " many rumours."] Several cyclones and waterspouts passed over a station near Hamilton, tearing large trees, four and five feet in diameter, up by the roots. A sheet of roofing iron was lifted up and carried half a mile, and large limbs of trees were carried over the tops of houses. The report that a student was bastinadoded to death at Constantinople officially denied by the Turkish Ambassador at London. The Herald has a leading article on Major Atkinson's speech at Taranaki. It says in. reference to his remarks, that " They must carry on Government at a moderate rate, as a prudent man would manage his own estate. A popular Government is not in the position of a landed proprietor. It Cannot always do what it thinks best. , A prudnet man managing New Zealand as his private estate, and constructing railways with borrowed money, would not have encumbered himself in the course of a few years with the payment of interest upon three or four millions lying unproductive in works begun but finished. He would have concentrated his resources ' land his efforts ; he would have completed ; with speed the line that gave best 'promise of yielding profit and by following the same policy with others he would have kept down his annual expenditure in interest to the lowest point possible. New Zealand

the opposite course has been taken. A number of separate lines have been under construction simultaneously,; and consequently the proportion of capital lying unproductive, and the amount payable as interest have been raised to the highest point. The private manager would have had before him the comparatively simple question to decide how to expend the money to the best advantage ; the Government has had the more complex problem to solve, how to meet competing local claims and balance interests. If the Government had not been willing to distribute the expenditure, the money would not have been granted. The demands of localism have been satisfied, but the price is being paid in the shape of interest—£lßo,ooo a year upon unproductive outlay." Referring to what Major Atkinson said about arrangments with the Colonial Banks, the Herald remarks :—" It was understood when the last loan was negotiated in England with the Rothschild that there was something like an engagment or understanding that thes Colony should not appear in the market again for two years. Are not these borrowing in the Colonies a violation of the spirit of that understanding ? A letter in the Times, by the last mail, shows that by some at least they are so regarded. Sir J. Vogel has answered this, by saying the understanding was, that no fresh loanshuold be negotiated in London, this, however, has not been accepted by the complainants as a satisfactory answes. The meaning of the understanding was, that the public debt of New Zealand had been increased so largely and so rapidly, that the value of its securities would be likely to suffer by any immediate addition to it; but if the colonies was supposed to have approched the safe limit of its borrowing powers, it mattered little or nothing whether any new loans that might be contracted were raised in London or the Colonies. If the advance in the value of New Zealand bonds, of which Major Atkinson speaks, was he result, of the belief that the debt was not to be increased, whilst it was being increased by «n arrangment in the colonies, the present Government may lead to future loss in the shape of harder terms, when the London market is next tested."