The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1889.

Feilding Star, Volume X, Issue 125, 27 April 1889, Page 2

The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1889.

The following alarmist paragraph is from the Woodville Examiner : — "A Napier solicitor, who has been on a visit to Woodville, describes the state of aftairs in Napier as * frightful, and worse to come.' The banks are pressing in their overdrafts, and there is a general contraction of business." It strikes us as singular that the only person who should have discovered the " frightful, and worse to come" state of affairs should bo a local solicitor; but whoever he may be, it is clear that his standing must be good or our well informed contemporary, the Examiner, would not have allowed a statement of so wild and sweeping a character to find its way even into his *' local" items of news. We have seen nothing in the Hawkes Bay papers on the subject. At the same time we have no hesitation in giving it as our opinion that this aspersion of Napier, is neither more nor loss than pure bunkum of a somewhat spiteful character. It requires no testimony from ua to prove that Hawkes Bay is one of the most solvent provinces in the colony, or that its capital town of Napier is a splendid instance of prosperity, because these are accopted as facts by those resi dents in other purts of the world whose business it is to be we.l informed as to the financial soundness, or the revers , of every pare of the Au - tralasian colonies. Iv these columns we have already frequently animadverted on the vile habit too many of our fellow colonists have of vilifying themselves and their neighbors for no apparent reason, but which may bo attributed to "that innate foolishness which develops by the too rapid accumulation of adipose matter, and which follows too easily earned eubsistance." One of the first cries an alarmist likes to raise is that " the banks are calling in their overdrafts." It is so simple ; nobody really understands the meaning of the phrase ; while no body is so really ignorant on the subject as he who first gives it voice. Therefore it answers splendidly for a variety of purposes. As a rule people who talk the most on the subject of finance are those who know the least ; but it unfortunately happens that their auditors are generally as ignorant as the speakers, therefore the most silly and crude statements are freely accepted and repeated as " confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ." Taking it " bye and large " as the sailors d », it is much better, though admittedly more difficult, to speak well of ones own country or neighbors, and it v a pity that the homely proverb al out the " ill bird that fouls its own nest" ia too little remembered even by those who from education and recognised social position are expected to know better.