COUNTRY EDITION. The Daily Telegraph THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3158, 11 August 1881, Page 2

COUNTRY EDITION. The Daily Telegraph THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 1881.

MeSadndkrs deserved the discouraging snub that he received yesterday in the Hou?e. Ever ready to lecture and scold the Government for their extravagance and maiituministration, h< j has never been prepared with any practical suggestion. His motion yesterday, if it meant anything at all, wns one of want of confidence, but had it co-ne to a division Mr Saunders' vote would have gone against his convictions and sympathies as it has previously done. But his motion really meant nothing, except it offered another opportunity for delivering a lecture. Wben it appeared on the Order Paper the Dunedin Star said ot it that Mr Saunders is, ia truth, delightfully vague: " That no financial proposals will be acceptable to the House that are not based on the strict adaptation of tbe annual expenditure of the Colony to its annual revenue without the assistance of borrowed money, and do not aim at the complete separation of colonial and local finance, and ihe entirp emancipation of the latter from the control or interference of this Mouse." Now the very keystone of Major Atkinson's finance is the equalisation of revenue and expenditure, which, during the year ended March 31 last, has been practically accomplished. It is for Mr Saunders to explain what he meaDs by " without any assistance from borrowed money." Is it tbat he asks the House to positively place a veto on the aid to revenue by Treasury bills, however urgently money might be required to meet emergencies ? or does he desire to stop all further expenditure on public works out of the balance available from loans, and apply this balance to redeeming debentures ? Then, again, be will ask the house to declare that no financial proposals will be acceptable that do not aim at the complete separation of colonial and local finance. We had rather come to the conclusion that this separation was complete enough with a vengeance, in that further payment of subsidies is hopeless. Under the Goverament scheme of local finance the amount available towards assisting counties and road districts will depend altogether on the receipts from the land sales ; consequently, as the Land Fund is to be kept altogether separate for these purposes of locil appropriation, we fail to understand the object of Mr Saunders' third proposition, as well as the fourth, which is practically involved therein. A debatesuch as theoneraised by Mr Saunders' motion merely offers an opportunity for the ventilation of all mariner of schemes, chimerical and vague, to establish the speakers' ability to deal with vexed questions of finance, and demonstrate in the eves of the country the fatuity of tbe Ministers. In debates of this character there is wonderful scope for ignorant self-assertion, and the purveyors of original nostrums are sufficiently irritating and tiresome ; but there is. if possible, a worse depth in tbe persistency with which members who have nothing to say which throws the slightest light on the subject from any point of view, and who notoriously cannot carry two connected ideas in their heads, deliver themselves of set speeches—condemnable iterations of thoughts previously expressed in far happier style and language, or frothy vaporings without object or method. In view of the impending general election, the talking nuisance is likely to be exceedingly aggravated during tbe remainder of the session, and it would be a blessing if the conviction could be carried home to tbe minds of two-thirds at least of tbe talkers that to tbem silence would indeed be golden, and that tbe sensible portion of the constituents by no means appreciate having prominent attention directed to the not very remarkable sagacity of their choice.