WANGANUI HARBOUR EXPENDITURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2189, 2 March 1881, Page 3

WANGANUI HARBOUR EXPENDITURE.

Writing on the resent Harbor Board election, the " Wanganui Chronicle " says-The majority which the ticket secured furnishes another proof that the hankering after borrowed money for public works, without due consideration of probable results, is still very strong in Wonganui. The retribution in the shape of enormously increased rates and taxes has not yet come home with sufficient force to the minds of the people. Perhaps they are not slower in learning the lessons than men in other parts of the colony. Yet the events of the past two or three years ought to have taught them wisdom, A very large proportion of the distress which has prevailed, and has not yet passed away, is owing to reckless public expenditure of an unremnnerative character. The money is very nice so long as it lasts, but unless when the final shilling has bean parted with, works not only pay interest, but beyond that become a positive source of wealth to the community, the loan had better not have been contracted—the game has not been worth the candle—and those who suffer most, those who

come in many instances to want the actual necessaries of life, arc the working classes who at all events in New Zealand hare hitherto shown themselves incapable of re sitting the temptation of the present advantages to be derived from an extravagant public expenditure. With regard to these proposed works at the heads, wo repeat that, it they are undertaken, it will bo at the sacrifice of a most valuable endowment, which if retained for a while, would bring four times as much as can be expected for it in the course of the next twelve months.