MR MONTGOMERY AT AKAROA.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3971, 12 April 1884, Page 3

MR MONTGOMERY AT AKAROA.

Cueistciiueoii, This day. Mr Montgomery addressed tho electors on Thursday night. Ho said : On the whole the last session could not be considered as a satisfactory one by the country. Ministers had a commanding majority, which refrained from speaking and voted in a solid body when called on. The Opposition members made some important motions and they spoke on the various measures before the House, but they never resorted to tactics of factious obstruction. Ministers had their own way and are entitled to all the credit they can justly claim, and are also entirely responsible for tho financial difficulty. The main causes of the depression in the Middle Island, and of the present financial difficulty are these—(l) the immense annual drain for payment of interest on the public debt, (2) the excessive departmental expenditure of the Government, (3) the largo tracts of freehold land lying in a state of nature which tho owners will neither cultivate nor sell at a price to pay farmers, and (4) the rents drawn by absentee proprietors. There are other minor causes of the depression, but I will not have time to deal with more than these four. I will take first the enormous amount of interest we have annually to pay on our public debt. If tho money received from loans had been expended on remunerative works wo would not have had to resort to a crushing taxation to find money to pay the interest, but from the inauguration of tho public works policy the money was spent improperly to secure a majority in the House. Gentlemen, Aye must at all hazards meet our engagements ; no matter how severely we may feel the taxation, we must pay the interest of our debt. But I hope you think, and I trust the great majority of tho people of New Zealand think—and that there will bo an overwhelming expression of opinion— that colonial borrowing shall cease. While the colony continues to borrow the Ministry will have to keep their supporters' districts, or leave the Treasury Benches. Our safety can only be assured by ceasing to borrow. Tho second point is the enormous departmental expenditure. It is pressing heavily on the resources of tho colony. It is not the amount of pay to each individual in tho Civil Service, for if the conntxy is to be well served the par must be fair. The civil servants should be placed on a footing similar to that on which those employed in the office of a prosperous merchant or in tho works staff of a manufcturer arc placed— fair play and sufficient work. It is the excessive number of civil servants employed which wo should object to. If instead of the spasmodic efforts lately made the Government had steadily for the last four years seized every opportunity of ! lessening the number Of- officials by not filliug up vacancies when they occurred, by amalgamating offices, and generally by simplifying the work to bo done, an immense saving would have been effected, and the service placed on a footing more satisfactory to the civil servants themselves. Thirdly, there are immense tracts of good agricultural land lying in a state of nature, held by individuals and companies, which the owners either will not sell at the price people could afford to pay and profitably occupy. And what is the consequence f The people are forced to cultivate second and third-class land, and the producing capacity of the colony is thereby limited. The people arc not able to develop the resources which nature has placed within their reach. We must have a poll tax on holders of agricultural land which will make them cither cultivate or sell. Fourthly, a largo amount of rent is drawn from this colony by absentee proprietors. Some of them are high in the roll of tho English nobility. They have estates out here, and their agents collect the rents which are spent in England. Of all the curses with which a couutry can be permanently afflicted nothing can bo worse than absentee proprietors. We require a heavy tax on them. New Zealand should be for New Zealanders. This is not a narrow or selfish policy ; it is the law of self-preservation. You are all aware of the indignation expressed by speakers of every shade of politics against tho recent unjust increase of railway rates, and you have seen that they were unanimous in their opinion that there should be separate Boards, non-political, in each island for managing the railways. I Jook upon that expression of opinion as mi evidence of healthy public thought;' The people in this island will no'longer allow its interests to bo ignored to miit the caprices of Ministers living in a political oontro, with strong contracted Wellington | and

Taranaki prejudices. People are now asking each other why should the railways in the Middle Island pay 3 or 4 per cent, when tho Wellington and Taranaki railwaj r s do not pay one per cent. ? The people are beginning to be alive to the fact that Canterbury and Otago are tho milch cows drained dry annually for the benefit of some places in tho North Island ; and this awakening of the people is evidence of a change. Perhaps there never -was any question so full of danger as that of federation. With respect to the annexation of the islands in the Pacific it is a dream or a delusion, and if persisted in it would assuredly be a snare. Fortunately nothing can come of annexation ; but in federation there lies a real danger of so much magnitude that in my opinion the people of New Zealand should have nothing to do with it whatever. What, give up the control of our external affairs, which would inevitably affect and prejudice our internal administration, to a Council sitting in Hobart! A Federal Council to have any power for good or evil must have money, and its decrees must have a force to carry them into execution. We expected that the man who had brought the country into a grave financial difficulty would have given at least an outline of tho means by which ho hoped to extricate it; but instead of that we have had a dreary waste of words, and after wading through a report of four columns in the newspapers we ask ourselves what it is all about. He (the Premier) avowed himself some two years ago to be a limited dcnominatioualist. Now ho talks, but says nothing—mere words. But lie had something in his mind about land tenure, it was not giving satisfaction, at least in the old countries. What would be ultimate tenure, he adds, it was impossible to see. "In tho Old Country," said the Premier, " The State limited the power of contract between landlord and tenant. When once you get to that it was only a question of degree, not of principle, as to tho right of tho State to interfere in freehold title." What docs this mean? Here is a public man who li:is boon supported in power by land rings as a man who made laws which enabled a number of men to acquire immense freehold estates, and now he tells us that the State lias the right to interfere with freehold title. What docs he mean ': The effect of his speech will bo to unsettle men's minds as to the value of freehold title—that is to unsettle them as far as his utterances can go. There is one cheering passage in the Premier's speech. "He hud come to ihc conclusion that there wan no real depression." This is satisfactory information to the people of the Middle Island. He has said there is no real depression, and of course that settles the matter. He lives in Wellington, and takes a trip now and again to Taranaki. He sees a lively, hopeful people there ; plenty of public money circulating, and the future prospects bright. But what about the people in the Middle Island who have to supply a great portion of that money ? He challenges me to table a motion condemning tho rise in the railway tariff. He thinks ho can depend on tho votes of those members whose districts grow no grain. Many of the Canterbury members gave him a generous confidence. They placed and sustained him in power. Now he thinks he can do without them, and he kicks away tho ladder by which ho rose. Ho knows that their eyes arc opened, that they recognise him as a hollow financial failure—the same failure that he was in 1877, when Mr Stafford characterised his finance as a delusion and a snare. But he must not labor under the delusion that this agitation, caused by the unjust rise in the grain freight, will be settled in such a simple manner as he proposes. Does ho think the people of Canterbury and Otago will allow the matter to rest ? Does he think these two provinces will allow the continual drain on their resources for the benefit of his favored districts ? Ho will find, or I am much mistaken, that Auckland and Hawke's Bay will not consent to bo taxed to support railways like that of Taranaki and Now Plymouth, the returns of which just published show that they did not even pay working expenses last year. Members should have been called together early in this month, so that tho representatives of tho people might consider what was best to be done to get the colony out of its difficulties. Instead of doing this plain duty Ministers allow things to drift till the 3th of June, so that the lives of the Ministry may be prolonged for a couple of months, and with tho hope that something may turn up to their advantage. They think the Opposition arc anxious to have an early meeting of Parliament to get an opportunity to unseat the Government. What the Opposition wanted was for the session to bo held early so that an appeal might bo made to the electors, that the voice of tho country might bo effectively heard, feeling assured that whoever may succeed tho Ministry now occupying the Treasury benches tho present men must go. A Ministry which has used means to retain place which this Ministry has resorted to; a Ministry which would never retrench, but on the contrary resisted all the endeavors of others to reduce expenses ; a Ministry which has got the colony into a financial mess, and dares not call tho members together at tho close of tho financial year —the days of that Ministry arc numbered, and they know it; and tho sooner they go the better for tho country.