The Globe. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1875.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 389, 10 September 1875, Page 2

The Globe. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1875.

The reply of the Hon Major Atkinson when going into committee on the Abolition Bill, brings out more clearly than has yet been done the financial effects of abolition. During the late discussion the roh which the Opposition has taken up has been, that the aim of the Government is to pave the way for the seizure of the land fund of the provinces. They have chosen to ignore the fact that our land fund has been already pledged for the interest on the money expended in the construction of the railways within our boundaries. The Treasurer has been at some pains to show that, as far as Canterbury and Otago are concerned, they will have enough to do to pay their own way and that when that is done, there will be very little left to seize by the Central authority, and he very reasonably asked if it was likely that the Government would have willingly invited all the stir and hubbub which they have raised with a view of getting a possible £36,000 or so. It was for very different reasons that they undertook to carry abolition. It was because the demands of the provinces were becoming year after year more difficult to satisfy, that it was found necessary to sweep them away. Even the hon member for Akaroa himself admitted as much, and that the provihcialists, by their repeated and often successful attempts, to dip their hands into the Colonial chest, had brought about their own destruction. It is useless to shut our eyes to the fact, that the future financial condition of the colony depends to a very great extent upon the wisdom displayed in its management during the next year or two. With a debt of nearly twenty millions, involving an annual charge for interest and sinking fund of nine hundred thousand pounds, it is evident that our resources must be husbanded to the utmost. The Colonial Treasurer sees no cause for fear. We hope he is right. But aV any rate the colony oaunot afford to be annually subjected to these combined attacks upon the Treasury chest, which has marked nearly every session of the Assembly for years past. What do the Opposition offer the country in exchange for the measures the Government propose. No one has told us. Their leader Sir George Grey, talks in large and indefinite terms of a change in the incidence of taxation, which he says will relieve the population from the grinding oppression of the present system. We have never heard that it is felt to be so very oppressive by the mass of the people. When the public works and immigration policy was adopted,

as it was by acclamation, throughout the colony, the public were warned that taxation would have to be kept up to the highest point it could bear. In the face of these warnings we deliberately adopted the policy, and the people seem perfectly satisfied with the result. What will happen when the expenditure of our borrowed millions ceases, it is not for us confidently to predict, but at any rate a pressure more or less severe, will most likely be felt. It is therefore the duty of our statesmen to prepare for such a contingency, by most carefully watching our expenditure in the meantime. But it is impossible to do so as long as our finance is liable to constant disturbance by the demands of impecunious provinces. It is not by a shuffling of taxation, however cleverly managed, that our debts will be paid, but by careful management and rigid economy. We, therefore, hope for the sake of the welfare of the colony that Sir G-eorge Grey and his party will be long excluded from power. "We have no faith in their promises of retrenchment which, were they once on the Treasury Benches, with the provinces at their back, would not commence before " Doomsday and " late in the afternoon."