FUNDED DEBT FOR NEW ZEALAND.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 480, 31 December 1875, Page 2

FUNDED DEBT FOR NEW ZEALAND.

To the Editor of the Globe. Sir, —What is a Fancied Debt ? The question is not such a simple one as it looks. There is as much difference in the Funded Debts of the world, as there is in horses. There are old knackers fit only for killing, and there are animals like Eclipse and Flying Dutchman, the wonder, admiration, and desire of the world. So you have the Turkish Funded Debt, the curse of its bond holders, smoke to the eyes of the Turk’s themselves, a byword and a disgrace in the telegrams that reach in every nation and tongue to the remotest corners of the Globe. ~¥ou have the French Funded Debt—really a war tax of £200,000,000 paid by the English on account of France to Germany—and France has to pay the interest partly to foreigners. Then there is that fabulous Funded Debt, eight hundred million pounds, due by the British mainly to themselves. The annual charge upon it is nearly thirty million pounds, the major portion of which charge circulates back into the hands of the British. Consols are the stand-by of widows and orphans trusts, Bank and Insurance Reserves, Corporation Sinking and Trust Funds, the general refuge (after Exchequer bills) of the loose cash of the country and of trade.

So far I have answered my question, What is a Funded Debt ? What could you do with a Funded Debt in New Zealand ? fNotmuch, unless it were readily convertible anti accessible, and this it can only become by affiliating your institutions here, as I suggested in my paper on Banking with the London Banking systems, and with my old habitat, the Loudon Stock Exchange, This can be done by proper charters, by telegraph and steam post connection with the old world. A Stock Exchange should be established here in direct relation with the Loudon Stock Exchange, and the sworn brokers of the House could pass through the Bank of England purchases or sales of £IOO,OOO New Zealand consols on to the London market at any time (more of less is implied of course). Again, what would you do with New Zealand consols ! Use them for all trust purposes, of every possible description. Thus, a man dies, and knowing to what terrible fluctuations landed property in New Zealand is subject, orders a sale (by will) of his estate, and its appointment among his children, wife, &c. Where can you invest the money ? Where so well as in your own New Zealand consols ? The Life Insurance Companies have to pay £20,000 as a guarantee to New Zealand Government. W here can they put it so well as into New Zealand consols ? Where are the Bank Reserves invested ? Six banks are busy working in New Zealand. Suppose they each kept a reserve of £200,000 —that would be £l,2oo,ooo—where would you have then keep it? Not surely in coin, along with the cash required by law to be held against their circulation and deposits ? No ; but in New Zealand consols, provided that in times of pressure they can find a a ready market through London afiiliation. First by telegraphed sale credits from Bank of England and Stock Exchange, and secondly, by legal tender issues of the New Zealand Branch Bank of England proposed by me. So at once you have room for over £2,000,000 New Zealand consols for companies. But then there are the Savings Bank £OOO,OOO and Government Insurance Reserves. Where ought they to be, but in the same place? Now, remember that every year sees the amount of New Zealand trade increase, and its reserves should increase too. I take it that the private trust funds of New Zealand ought of themselves to be £5,000,000 before the year 1900 a. d. I include in that live millions the then Savings Bank Deposits and the Government Insurance Reserves. God ! But what sort of Funded Debt is your New Zealand Consols ? It is really a New Zealand Railway and Telegraph. Preference Stock, and Consols as well. The best in the world, because it is standing on 1000 miles of Railway, a splendid and increasingly profitable Telegraph system, and lastly a landed Estate (second to none in the world) of 60 million acies of freehold ; your mountains, whose bowels teem with wealth, gold, iron, coal, copper, fireclay, pottery clay; lithographic and building marble, and lime stone; untold millions of property, and a population at present under half a million, but soon, if we be properly governed, to be over a million souls.

The Government of the day have conducted themselves in such a manner as to forfeit the confidence of the country—1. They gave way to the demand “your money or your life,” and preferred to pay away the loan wrongfully, in fiat violation of the Act of Parliament, rather than appeal to the country, or lose their billets. 2. They wasted the whole of last session in staking their existence on the principle of non-reference to the people, and then gave up the point to Messrs Kolleston, Sir G. Grey, McAndrew, &c. 3. They were trusted with a Mail Contract, with stipulated subsidy. They have broken through that subsidy, and, worse still, vessels have been sent out known to be rotten and unfit for passenger traffic (see the ’Frisco papers), neglecting the simplest precautions of trade and common sense. 4. Their policy can only be described in the celebrated nickname coined by the witty John Buuyau—Mr. Facing-both-ways. When it first appeared it was Local Government, with the sop of the £1 for £l. Now we have plastered Provinces, which receive a coat of whitewash, and are then dubbed Boards of Works or Shire Councils, ■while the sop on all hands is counted visionary and even unjust. These men veer like weather-cocks to every breeze of public opinion, and show uo mind of their own.

Ou all these subjects, and en the plots for malversation of large landed estates in the North Island, Messrs Bowen and Richardson “ Have folded their tents like the Arabs,

And have silently stolen away.” In the narrow limits prescribed by a paper I can but faintly give my ideas ; but I now boldly say I should be sorry, very sorry as a patriotic man, to see my Banking, Funded Debt, and Steam Shipping ideas placed in the hands of the present Ministry. They would twist and turn them out of all sense and reason, and do more mischief than good. They have allowed the Bank with £OOO,OOO to do a business of eight millions and threequarters to the danger of New Zealand. They have taken no steps to put trade on a sound footing. I should have liked, if my brother electors had given me a seat in the House, to have pressed solid facts and sound principles on the country ; and I now throw them down, hoping that Messrs Stafford, Sir G. Grey, Kolleston, McAndrew and Stevens will unite to form a new Government, to abandon all ideas of separation, of provin-cialism;-'to carry out with courage and honesty these reforms which the present Ministry have not had the wit to think of, and certainly have not courage to force to completion. The Hon. Mr Stafford was in my mind when I spoke lately of the Hero, and I hope to see him take that position with its contingent rewards, and by these means shall we not all unite to make our beloved Zealandia the Queen of the Pacific. I propose to give you a paper on your New Zealand Shipping and the ’Frisco Mail —the rotten Yankee steamers and the contract nobs. Yours, &c., J. W. TREADWELL.