The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21,1895. FOREIGN CAPITAL.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 72, 21 September 1895, Page 2

The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21,1895. FOREIGN CAPITAL.

It is a mistake to suppose that a sudden and large influx of foreign capital is an unmixed blessing. A contemporary in New South Wales writing of the depression says the cause of the falling to pieces of things in general was the financial collapse which was the natural out come of the twenty years borrowing boom which practically ended iv 1891. The great influx of foreign capital which started in 1870 had the most disastrous results by sending up prices and wages, giving a fictitious value|to land, and creating an artificial state of prosperity. The typical financiers of the " boom " years were, taking them all round, a despicable lot. What the Australia nation apparently fails to understand is tfaat the worst of its losses were owing to its child-like faith in the advantages of " bringing money into the country." What it has to learn is that whether fooled away in wars, building railways to nowhere, fortifications, or bridges, the result is very much the same in the end. The influx of large sums of money means a general inflation ; the stoppage of the influx — and it must stop sooner or later — means collapse, want of work, a sudden disappearance of shattered companies, bankruptcy, misery, hunger, aud general disolation. Few more enduring curses ever fell on a civilised country than the " influx of foreign capital." What applies to Australian

applies to this colony. We have suffered in the last few years for the " booms " of the preceding two decades. We believe the present Ministry when they took office recognised that " a nonborrowing and self-reliant policy " was not only the best, bnt the only one that could enable the colony to extricate itself from the financial distress which afflicted it as a consequence of previous excesses. But the circumstances of of their surroundings, combined with the absence of any member in their ranks of eren mediocre financial ability, capable of being applied in a statesmanlike manner, compelled them to revert to the old intoxicating remedy of " the introduction of foreign capital " not directly, but indirectly, as the large increase of the public debt of the colony proves to a demonstration. Neither a public works boom, nor a boom for farmers, although there are "signs and tokens" that they are going to have better times in the near future, have yet commenced ; but we have a mining boom which is increasing in strength and vigor day by day. Foreign capital, we are told, is flowing into the country in tens of thousands of pounds, and, unless past experience goes for nothing, much of it will be swallowed up in the maelstrom of Wild Cat mines and by " cute " speculators. We have already said that the Minister of Mines has anticipated such a contingency by introducing legislation to protect honest speculators so far as is possible, but we fear that, notwithstanding this, the usual willing victims will be sacrified in the altars of greed and chicanery which spring up like mushrooms in the night. It is but the Utopian dream of a New Zealand politician that the day will come when this fair land will be peopled by a nation self reliant, self respecting, and self supporting, doing its share in supplying the markets of the world with wool, gold, grain, and oil ; working in the van of progress with steady purpose, and too proud to look for outside help to maintain its place as a monument of commercial honesty and political consistency. Such a dream may be fulfilled, but we fear not in our day and generation, while not only our politicians but too niauy of the people look to the introduction of foreign capital as the only I means to achieve that end instead of ] honest labor, commercial morality, and jndicious enterprise in settling the lands with freehold farmers.