FINANCIAL POSITION OF NEW ZEALAND.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2099, 15 November 1880, Page 2

FINANCIAL POSITION OF NEW ZEALAND.

Westgarth’s Circular of September 24th has the following : Of late there has been a persistent sat against this colony, in exposing all the dark side of its present case, with hardly if at all any allusion to what may be said on the other side. Any one who has watched intelligently the large and continuous outlay of borrowed money upon public works, chiefly railways, for some years past, must have foreseen a crisis when all this drew to its close. That crisis opened upon the colony last year, and it was seriously precipitated both by a concurrent very bad harvest and by the collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank with ita large New Zealand land connections. The most prominent consequence was a large and unprecedented revenue deficiency, amounting to no lees than £990,000, caused mainly by the falling off in land sales. This deficiency, covered for the time by the issue of two and a-half years’ Treasury bills, must admittedly for the present be added to tho public debt, thus raising its amount to £27,000,000. All this is of course bad enough for a population still short of half a million, including aborigines, and it is still aggravated by the unsettled and transitional state of the labor market. Men who have bean getting freely for years past 10s and 12a a day do not readily accede to a reduction to ss, and that too accompanied in many cases by a change in the naturo of their employment. The practical outcome of this condition is that for this transition interval there is an unusually large balance of hands unemployed, and naturally very great dissatisfaction amongst them all throughout the colony. But let us turn now to the other side of the picture. The present Government, which is entirely opposed to the colony’s excessive borrowing, and has now brought it to a close, has at once faced the financial emergency, and by a reduced expenditure and increased taxation has already balanced the estimates of the current year, with a surplus of £41,000. The Government is about to chock also the late extensive municipal borrowing. The colony’s reviving efforts have been materially helped by the very abundant harvest of the present year. Again, the high price and comparatively scant supply of labor for the colony’s general purposes for years past, with all this railway making, have held in abeyance many improvements and much progress that could not afford the heavy cost. These will soon have their fair chance, and concurrently the colony’s productive outcome will be proportionately increased. The reduced money wages are already nearly as effective as before, with the increased supply and cheaper price of necessaries. The rates of money, too, which, with excessive land speculation, have been for some time at 10 to 12 per cent., are now by latest accounts down to 8 per cent., thus affording a further chance for real progress. With ita network of railways, its genial climate and fertile soil, New Zealand now presents to us an apparatus of wealth production which, for a like territorial area, is confessedly not equalled in any part of the Empire. The colony is in full credit with the many strong banka within its area for any temporary deficiency ; and its financial interests on this aide have long been, and still continue to be, ably and efficiently conducted by the Crown agents. The prompt rectification of the finances, even in the first intensity of the crisis, shows that there is power and resource as well as good will. That such a colony, whether through want of will or want of resource, as timid investors may have feared, should make any financial default even for once in the mere matter of exact punctuality, is about as unlikely, tho colony may well claim to say, as that the British Government itself should make such default.