The Daily Telegraph. TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 1884.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4032, 24 June 1884, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 1884.

Several members of the House of Representatives have tried to account for the commercial depression to which in reality Ministers owe their defeat more that to anything else. Amongst others Mr Holmes, the member for Christchurch South, is reported to have said that tho depression is not due to the low price of colonial produce, but to the absurdly high price tho deferred payment selectors had been led to give for their land. Sir George Grey also ascribed the depression to undue competition for deferred payment land owing to the blocks being too small. To persons residing in a part of the colony where the deferred payment system of settlement has been most successfully carried out, the arguments advanced by Mr Holmes and Sir George Grey must appear funny enough. In the natural order of things that which a thing will fotch in the open market is generally that which it is worth. But Mr W. O. Smith does not think this applies to land, for he said in his speech on tho no-con-fidence motion, "Unfortunate people who go to settle on the bush lands aro asked now to pay the upset price of £2 to £3 and even : m-re per acre, and, if they cannot pay that, they simply cannot get the land.' On the . face of it this does not appear a very great ■ hardship. Tho samo rule applies to all ; things through a man's life-time; if a man : cannot afford to pay for a thing ho simply cannot get it. As it happens, however, tho : prices fixed by tho Hawke's Bay Waste Lands Board do not seem excessive when ' viewed in the light of recent land sales. * ■

We allow that the competition has been

great, but if there has been undue competition it surely is the fault of the buyers rather than of the seller. The competition that has been experienced at all events goes to :.-Low that the land is worth having, and that the upset price has not boon put at a scale to deter purchasers. These facts speak for themselves, and are worth a great deal more than the sentimental nonsonse that is so often uttered on this question. Mr Smith, indeed, is extremely fond of picturing the bush settler as a most miserable creature, toiling for a bare living on poor soil for which he is compelled to pay the utmost penny. If this were a true description of the state of tho case it is an extraordinary circumstance that the number of these unfortunates should yearly increase, and that men should be found in increasing numbers willing to pay their utmost farthing for this poor soil. We should have credited Mr Smith with more acumen than to imply that so large a portion of his constituents are penniless idiots. It is a compliment they are not likely to forget at the polling booth, for it shows that he either does not understand the simple question of supply and demand, or that he is ignorant of the circumstances of the bush settler. It is notorious that a large per centage of the deferred payment settlers, after making one or two payments, transfer their sections to others a: :■ very considerable profit. Thero can be no possible objection to this, because vei-y many prefer a partly cleared section to one entirely in its wild state. Those who sell out in this way go further a-field, and with their increased capital purchase a larger area. But what the prices of small bush sections havo to do with the depression we are at a loss to conceive. We should thiuk the deferred payment settler has as much to do with the general scarcity of money as the want of an elective Upper Chamber, or the absence of a Doomsday Book. \Vo are afraid Sir George Grey's reasons for the depression are like those described by Bassanio to Antonio:—"His reasons are two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff ; you shall seek all day ere you find them ; and when you have found them thoy are not worth the search."

" If there were reason for these miseries, Then into limits could I. bind my woes : — "Wilt thou havo a reason for this,coil?"

—We should like one very much, but we may search the speeches of members of our Parliament in vain for one. We take it that the real cause lying at the bottom of the depression is that the spending power of the people has beon very seriously curtailed owing to two well-known other causes—the public and private indebtedness of the colonists, and the low prices ruling in the old country for our products. The whole country is groaning and travailing in debt. Tho colony owes a State debt that demands the payment of a million and a half sterling annually, every penny of which lias to be earned in and then sent out of this country. That of itself is an enormous drain for so small a population to stand ; but there is quite as much again goes out of the colony yearly to jiay interest on private loans and mortgages. The landowner has his mortgagee in England; the merchant is indebted to the bank, the tradesman to the merchant, the customer to the retail tradesman, and so it goes on through every grade of society till everyone finds it a necessity to live by credit. It is not to be wondered at then that there should be a depression deep and far-reaching, which is felt now through the fact of our produce realising in the market little more than the cost of production.