WHAT WOULD BALLANCE HAVE DONE?

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1040, 1 February 1911, Page 4

WHAT WOULD BALLANCE HAVE DONE?

It is a constant source of satisfaction to us that the ' Ghristchurch organ of tho Ministry displays more Kal than candour, and more courage than intelligence, in carrying out its policy of saying something about Tun Dominion , every day. For it thus supplies us with excellent op-, portunitics to expose the faults and vices of the present Administration, and with excellent illustrations for our arguments. On Saturday, it will be recollected, wo showed that if the Wakd Government had not increased tho cost of th.3- Departments above the high annual figure at which Me. Seddon loft it, it would have saved by now a nest-egg of over five million pounds, which would have rendered unnecessary the flotation of most of ■ tha £0,000,000 loan. The Christehurch paper hastens to assure the credulous folk who support it that what we said was that "the Conservatives would have raised none of the recent five million loan except tho £1,250,000" for.the Dreadnought. This "statement," it adds, is of importance because The Dominion is "specially, commissioned" to express the views of the leaders of the Opposition and is "authorised to propound" the policy the party would follow if it obtained possession of the Treasury benches. From the rubbish we have placed within quotation marks it was an easy step' for the Christchurch journal to say that Me. Massey would cease tho . policy of closer settlement, practically shut down on.public works, and close the loan Departments of-the State. We •have no doubt a few of our critic's readers will believe this, but nobody else'will: it carries its falsity on its .face. But wo notice it because it v is evidence of the increasing difficulty of the Government's friends in their struggle against the steady and overwhelming pressure of those deadliest critics of the Government, namely, facts. Most people—including a great many of the Government supporters—know that the Government ia borrowing far too heavily; and we have shown that if the Government abandoned its insane extravagance it could obtain from the savings of prudence tho bulk of what it need borrow in any case.

in the course.of its article our. contemporary clung to its foolish point too long, for it betrayed itself into saying,, as a final argument: By starting in 1891 and covering the whole period of tho Liberal regime it [The Dominion] might demonstrate by tho same process that Mr. Ballaucq and his successors should havo extinguished the national debt by this time aud have a tidy sum comfortably invested in Imperial consols.

Our contemporary is probably sorry already that it did not stop in time; but we are very glad it reminded us of Balunce. He said that "bprrowing must cease," and that expenditure must be reduced by "a more direct and simple form of administration." His successor as Colonial Treasurer said fifteen years a beginning should bo made with the extinction of tho public debt. Therefore, if we had shown what' our critic suggests we might have shown if we wanted to bo absurd, we should only hare been showing what Ballance and his successors meant to show in their actual government. , In other words, what is suggested by the Government's apologist as a ludicrous impossibility was actually contemplated and promised and aimed at by Ballance and his colleagues. Could anything illustrate more sharply than our critic's sad slip illustrates, the extent of Liberalism's apostasy and the extant of its drift from prudence and. honest intentions to an improvidence, a recklessness and an unscrupulousness that Ballance would hardly have admitted could be' possible under any Government, and least of all, under a Government that claims to be his legatee?