The Globe. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20, 1877.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 932, 20 June 1877, Page 2

The Globe. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20, 1877.

Dunrxo the last few weeks the Lyttelton Times has been devoting some space to an exposition of the financial condition of the Colony, and the result lie has arrived at has apparently been highly satisfactory to himself. On the 30th of June, we are assured, there will he a deficiency in the ordinary revenue of nearly £200,000. This result has been arrived at by a kind of arithmetic unknown to ordinary financiers. In analysing the public accounts of the Colony, he adds “ advances ” to " expenditure,” and so succeeds in running up his alarming total. Mr. Richardson, when addressing his constituents on Friday evening, took occasion to expose the astonishing blunder which the Times had made, and gave a t rll e and intelligible statement of our actual position. It was to be expected that our contemporary would have something to say in reply to Mr. Richardson's damaging remarks. After libelling the colony in the way in

which he has clone, the least he could do was to acknowledge the error into which lie had fallen, in a manly and straightforward manner, and do his best to correctly inform his readers as to our true position. Our contemporary takes no such course. With an airy indifference, sadly out of place in the circumstances, he makes light of the whole matter. He is not “ surprised to find that he (Mr. Richardson) takes a more rosy view of our financial position ” than he can. “ That is only natural.” “It is not at present our intention,” he says, “to follow his (Mr. Richardson’s) figures, and the deductions he makes from them; we should be as glad as he to find our deficit at the end of the year as small as he anticipates.” Many will question the sincerity of the above remarks. Of late our contemporary has given indications of being possessed lof an extraordinary and morbid desire to see the colony plunged into financial disaster, and his mania has so affected him, that he cannot, it would appear, add correctly. This state of mind has resulted not only in arithmetical imbecility —the Times cannot even read the Acts of Parliament, without making blunders. lie confuses the Counties Act and Financial Arrangements Act, charging the former with the omissions of the latter. Through an oversight in the Financial Arrangements Act no provision has been made for those cases in which the Counties Act is not brought into operation, and the consequence is that, in Canterbury, the support of the Hospital and Charitable Aid has fallen very heavily on the City of Christchurch. In his rabid hatred of the Counties Act, our contemporary blindly charges it with being the cause of evils for which it is in no way responsible. Can a journal which is constantly falling into such grave blunders as we have pointed out lay any claim to the position of a leader of public opinion ?