Financial and Native Affairs

Feilding Star, Volume VI, Issue 149, 2 June 1885, Page 3

Financial and Native Affairs

Mr Job* Btyre in the course of his ■ address to his eonsti vents on Saturday eroning last at Waverley, said :— He would like to say one word on the finances •f the colony. He regretted thnt he could mot take at hopeful a view of them at hit friend, VI ajor Atkinson. Considering that a small colony like this had to pay away year by year as interest on its indebtedness, public and private, something hk« three or four millions sterling, it was a severe strain on the colony's resources. He agreed with Major Atkinson as to the hopeful position of the colony, for there was no doubt that by care and industry it might retrieve it* position and return to prosperity, but lie wamorrr te say, and the Financial Statement of last session bore him out that the public and private men of the colony had a much stronger disposition to fly financial " kites" than to dig colonial potatoes (Hoar, hear) ; and unless that position improved he could not help thinking that the colony was in a very serious position indeed. There was nothing to attend to as closely as the ■ettlement of the land in order to further the prosperity of the colony; but a proper settlement was not to be secured by handing orer a million acres to a syndicate, or by shutting up a whole country side from settling:. Me did not wish to pass orer the subject of ifritatioH that had been going on up the coast recently. It ought to be passed yet if he did not remark upon it, he might render himself conspicuous by bit silence. Re did not himself attach »tieh importance to the circumstances, if only they were proDerly dealt with. Those occurrences were only such ai might be erpected, but, provided they were dealt with properly, there was nothing to fear. What he would advise the Government to do at present (if the Government would allow him the privilege of giving advice) was merely to enforce the l»w with the Maoris, who were very likely only feeling their way a*d trying to ascertain how far they

might go. It they were temporised with or attempts made to console them, he believed they would feel encouraged to give fresh cause for misunderstanding. Maoris, like all savage people, din not understand our ideas in that respect. N> quantity of palaver could take the place of the law.— (Applause.)