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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3884, 31 December 1883, Page 2

Writing on the subject of tho unemployed and their demands, the Christchurch Press says:—The other day we heard it shrewdly asked at a meeting of the unemployed, "What good has the last loan done the working- men P" Tho speaker was complaining, wo fancy, not so much of the amount of the loan, or the niischievousiics* of the loan policy, as of the borrowing- of the three millions being spread over three years instead of one. What he meant to say was, "What is the good of a million a year to the working men ? If you are going to borrow at all, borrow three millions or five millions in a lump, and spend it in a lump too, and then wo may all get a chance of making something out of it." But for all that his question was a startling one. A million a year is a tremendous sum for this little country to add to its already too large indebtedness. It is a tremendous sum for half a million of people to spend on public works. It is a tremendous sum of foreign capital to be introduced and circulated among so few. Yet it does nobody any good. It adds £50,000 a year to the permanent t.ixation ; and after all tho unemploj _d arc clamouring for bread, and talking .bout _si__- dynamite ! _lic_ say that they are taxed to pay the interest on this borrowed money, and that, therefore, they havo a right to a share of it. The rest of the public say the samo thing in other, words. They say it is high time for an end to be put to a policy which does nobody any good; but which fills our streets with agitators and malcontents, and plunges the whole community up to the neck in debt.