Mr T. B. Harding said that the first

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 806, 21 July 1870, Page 3

Mr T. B. Harding said that the first

part of the-resolution before the meeting introduced the thin end of the wedge ; it asked the meeting to approve of measures to rescue the Colony from its present state of stagnation, and in that manner introduced a clause which, if pis-ed, would commit the meeting to an approval of the gigantic scheme of the Colonial Treasurer, which would add so much to the diffieul ties under which the Colony was at present laboring. The present Premier of New Zealand, in his recent tour through the Colony, had condemned the preceding

Government in strong terms on account of their having devoted borrowed monej to war expenditure, and contrasted their conduct in this respect with that of the

' present Government who, he said, had noi borrowed, did not borrow, and did not intend to borrow. A few months had passed, and we found Mr Vogel, the (Solleague of Mr Fox, saying that the general revenue conld not be expected to defray the war expenditure, and that it should always have been defrayed from borrowed money. These were his words : —" It is useless for us to attempt to disguise from ourselves that when in 1863 we incurred an enormous loan for war purposes, which loan has been from time to time increased

by other expenditure of the same nature, we did that which put it utterly beyond the power of the Colony, in the present generation, to continue to pay interest upon those loans, and yet to defray out of its revenue large war expenditure." And again, " It is out of the question to suppose that the mere handful of people in New Zealand can pay interest for these." He here took the very qround on which Mr Fox had objected to a former ministry, aud said also that the present burden of war taxation was too heavy for the public to bear. And the burden of present taxation was indeed too heavy. The other day the Gfovernnor in a despatch to Earl Granville stated it as £6 per head of the European population. This was exclusive of provincial taxation—at least £1 more. And to this already intolerable burden £5 was proposed to be added, making it £l2 per head. [Applause, and No, no.] In fact, the Colonial Treasurer told us that we could not live within our means, and to rectify this must treble our debt. His excuse for entailing this eaormous liability upon posterity was that it would give posterity enormous means to meet it. In his ! financial statement he did not show how these means could be obtained, but with boundless impudence —[cheers and expressions of di-sent] —came forward with this and many other assertions of a like •lature, without a shadow of proof. His course reminded him (Mr H.) very strongly of that described in a sketch entitled " How [ got into G-ood Credit" recently published in a local newspaper, as having been adopted by a man who found himself in difficulties in one of the Colonies. He realised a few pounds by the sale of his furniture, and invested in tea, paving a portion of the purchase money in cash, and giving three months' bills for the remainder. On the strength of his dealings in tea he made a purchase oi sugar in a similar manner, and by sel ing this below cost price contrived to meet his tea bills. He continued this stvle of speculation for a time, until he got into good credit, when having a good many heavy bills falling due in a lew months, and being in the height of credit, he realized his goods, and was about to leave for another

colony, expressing his hopes on leaving, that his creditors would allow their ac J counts to stand over till his return. This was precisely the scheme the Grovernment intended to adopt with the Colony. It was now so deeply in debt that they proposed going into the market to borrow money to pay the interest. What could this result in but —repudiation ? [Applause, and cries of No, no.] Depend upon it, many now advocating the present scheme had repudiation in their mind's eye in tiie distance. He next referred to the great railway scheme. He found the Colonial Treasurer estimated that during the third year after his scheme was brought into operation,—while the railway would be only in course of formation, — it would yield the Colony, over and above working expenses, the sum of .£20,010. Any person looking at thecaleu'ation of the returns of the railway scheme alone could see that the results were enth-ely visionary. He told us that he would bring to these shores a great -.•tream of immigration, but did not showany plan by which the immigrants were to oe retained. Let the meeting look at the inducements offered to immigrants. Mr Y r ogel virtually says to them— We are now taxed more heavily than we can bear ; I am about to double our taxation, and we want you to come and bear a share of it. [Applause. J He did not suppose that the G-overmtient expected to carry their scheme in the form in which they had proposed it. They reminded him of the story of the farmer who persuaded his landlord to put a new gite to his farm by asking him at lirst to entirely re-fence it. Mr Vogel might not expect to get ten millions ; but no doubt he calculated on getting the assent of the House to a loan of four or five millions. An excellent speech on this subject had been made by one of the members of the Assembly, Mr Cracroft Wilson, from which he would read an extract; ">3ir, the financial statement of the present Finance Minister is based upon two main things, immigration and public works, aud we all know that by properly carrying out immigration and public wo; ks, this Colony would, in a short time, rise to a high pitch of eminence. That we all recognise ; but there are things which may be bought at too high a price. A man may be able to afford to ride in his own bullock dray, and another in his own carriage, while it might

be inexpedient for either of them to ride in a railway. 1 do not say Ido not ap- ( prove of railways, but if you have not gotj the money to construct them, it is madness to borrow money to do so, because you cannot rep;iy your debt; and t say this, that the improper use of the money which

was set apart as sinking funds to pay off the loans this Colony has already bor rowed, will call down the condemnation of other nations, and they will say, that having entered into an arrangement that certain loans should, by Statute, be paid off in a certain time, the devoting to other purposes the funds which were meant to extinguish those loans, is not au honest transaction. I have seen this money so used in this country, and I say that you are saddling your posterity with an eternal debt, for you are using as current revenue money that ought to have been set apart and invested in other securities than your 1 own. You are burdening posterity.with a debt you have no right to put upon them. Of course I agree that the country requires public works and immigration, but I am not so old that I have forgotten the events of 1833. 1 well remember, when I returned home after that session, and had a

meeting with my constituents, as was my custom then, I was called secerely to task for being a party to the three million loan. How did I excuse myself ? I went upon the ground of necessity, and I repeated the words which often now I deem I hear, uttered by the hon. gentleman opposite—the member for Parnell, Mr R. Qc. Wood —in the session of 1863, that all this debt was to be allocated to the Provinces in which it was expended, that it was to be recouped by the sale of confiscated lands, and that the contributions of the military settlers to the customs revenue would soon reimburse the country for the expense it was incurring." Here we came to the subject of confiscated lands, a very good instance in point. When that scheme was first broached, its plausibility and its jus

tice procured it universal commendation The lands of the rebels were to be made to pay the expenses of the war, and the three millions would be borrowed to meet mere temporary needs, and would be amply repaid. How was this scheme carried out? lie maintained that we had not had a fraction of the three millions returned to us. It would be said that the money had been squandered by the Government. Of course it had, but what guarantee had we that the present Government would not act in pre cisely the same manner? Were not the probabilities rather that they would? ICvery Government would be as profligate as the public would allow it to be. The Government was in the hands of the electors ; and if the public caught at the baits it offered, it was their fruit, more than thai of their rulers. Mr Oracroft Wilson continued—"lam sorry to say I said what was untrue, though I ft mly believed it at

the time, and I certainly misled my constituents very considerably." He would now refer to the meetings which had been

held in various parts of the colony, and would warn the public against implicitly believing the telegrams on the subject which they had read in the public press [Laughter and applause.] Many of them were positively untrue. For instance, he had seen it stated that the more the scheme was examined, the more it was approved. Now, from his knowledge of the subject, gathered from the whole Colonial press—specially from those places where meetings had been held—he could say that the more these proposals were looked into the more they were disliked. [Applause ] In the House the scheme had been called the "South Sea Bubble." He would quote again from Mr Cracroft Wilson :—'• We all know that, history repeats itself, and now, after the lapse of one hundred and sixty yoar3, there is another new South Sea Bubble proposed for our adoption. Is a scheme like that which history shows was inaugurated in England in 1710 and culminated in. 1720 to be re-enacted in this colony? If the madness for speculation, even in that comparatively small affair the Thames gold fields, was such that it made steady men, who were prudent managers of their affairs, mad to go and buy shares in the veriest bubble companies that ever started, and which they now regret having had anything to do with, what may we not anticipate from this rash scheme ? We know what history tells us, and in what language history speaks of the South Sea Bubble. I now entreat this 'Assembly to pause, and to prevent the historian of New Zealand writing, some fifty years hence, in reference to the scheme which is now before us, something of this sort—'The Vogel Bubble —the most ruinous speculation of modern times. It was projected by Julius Vogel, who had raised himself to the dignity of Finance Minister j it was miserablv conceived, and afterwards dishonestly managed. It comme:iced in 1870, and exploded in 1880, ruining thousands of families, and Mr Smith, the cashier, absconded with £100,000.'" [Overwhelming applause.] This was the opinion ol the Colony. After a few remarks iu condemnation of the railway scheme, Mr Harding moved the following amendment to the resolution before the meeting :

That having regard to the heavy taxation already borne by the country, this meeting strongly protests against any addition to the colonial debt, and accordingly condemns the financial scheme of the Government as ruinous to the future of the Colony.

Mr Woegan rose and said that as no one had seconded the amendment, he supposed he might speak to the resolution. The Chairman said Mr Worgan had not allowed time tor any person to second the amendment.

Mr Wokgan took his seat, and a Bhort pause ensued,

* Mr R. 0. Haediso seconded the amendment in order that the business of the meeting might not be brought to a stand jstill. It was not, however, as a mere matter of form that he.did so, and he wished 'that, of the many in the room who cordially agreed with the amendment now before them, some one better qualified had come forward.

Mr Woegah had risen before under th impression that the amendment would no find a seconder; but he supposed tha though it was now before the meeting, h< wou!d not be out of order in speaking tc the original resolution. It must not be in ferred that he was an interested party, foi if he allowed the manner in which he had been treated by the present Premier to influence him now, he would bear the Government a very bitter grudge. He supported the G-overnment scheme because he saw in it a greaS deal to approve of. He agreed with many things that had fallen from Mr Harding, and believed that gentleman's remarks had been dictated by patriotism and real good feeling; but he could not believe in the dark prospects of coming disaster which that gentleman had pictured. For his own

part these dismal forebodings bad so opDressed him as to put many of his ideas to flight. Our position was that we had a large estate without capital to develope its capabilities ; and it was argued that because our money had formerly been wasted, we were not now to increase our means. We had only to look at the history of our own country to perceive the fallacy of this statement. At each increase of the na» tional debt there had been prophets pre dieting all sorts of evii; but nevertheless the debt continued to increase, and what was the result ? Why it was found that each great increase to the debt was accompanied by a rebound of national prosperity, and that the country was never in so prjsperous a condition as when the debt amounted to £500,000,000. This shewed that debt was not necessarily an evil. If this proposed loan proved a curse to us instead of a blessing, the fault would be with us, and would be the result of our sending men who would pander to the cupidity of our own natures. He agreed with Mr darding that the £3,000,000 loan had been shamefully, madly wasted. He had heard a gentleman from the South t«ll of one of the railways which had been started from the funds' of the loan, and ended in the middle of a large desert. In Auckland, £150,000 had been thrown away on railway schemes which had never come to anything. But he had faith in the immigration schemes of the Government. The taxation certainly looked large on paper ; but it must be remembered that every adu t added to our population lessened that taxit ion, and increased the wealth of the Colony, He would not answer seriatim all the points raised by Mr Harding, nor those contained in Mr Cracroft Wilson's re marks, which had since been very ably answered by Mr Fox. As a whole he viewed the Government scheme favorably. He was now an old man, and one of experience in polities. He had seen things he dreamed of in 1820 become the law of the land, and he would conclude by warning them to watch that the money was properly expended. [Applause.]

iVlr 0 . iM. VViiibUJN was IlUfc i" a jjumwun to support either the resolution or the amendment. The former in effect asked the Government to do away with the present stagnation, which was no part of the duty of the Government. It was true that they might aggravate its symptoms, but they could not remove it. It was too general and wide-spread to be so relieved, unless the Government were omniscient and omnipotent. The present Government were embarrassed owing to a wasteful expenditure, over and above the means of the Colony, which had been going on for many years, so that they now found it difficult or impossible to pay their debts. The remedy they proposed was to increase those debts.. It would have been conducive to the required end to have brought forward a scheme of economy and retrenchment ; but that was an old fashioned method which any schoolboy might think of, and moreover, retrenchment involved a degree of unpopularity. It was a very simple measure, then, to borrow more money to meet old and future liabilities, and, moreover, there was a certain magic attraction in borrowed millions, which always gain support. We needed capital, and no doubt could, if the money were obtained go on for a time, until the fund was exhausted, and the Colony was again com pelled to borrow to pay the interest on its increased liabilities. He saw no .merit in the great scheme proposed, and did not think the Treasurer himself expected any return for the money, or that the money would be anything but wasted, like former loans. The scheme was not framed witli any regard to the future whatever; but simply wich a view to get the present colonial financier out of his present difficulties. [Hear, hear.] Of course the money would be wasted. We should see gigantic public works commenced in fifty places at the same time, and never carried out; [Hear, hear, and applause] we should have " Vogcl's Follies" all over the country ; and wherever we went s ould fiud gangs of men on " Government stroke." Not a shilling of the three million loan had found its way back to the Treasury, and so would it be with this. Not onl.v did he attribute no merit to th -s trainers and supporters of the scheme, but he believed their only object was to make something out of it for themselves. He had heard the word " repudiation" to-night, but did not think that a British community would ever allow that course to be resorted to, He believed they would some time meet their engagements, but he .(warned the meeting that it would be done 1 with such a struggle, and would cause suel:

- a period of depression and stagnation &f f ha i never before been known in a British Colony. [Applause.] This matter should • be looked upon quite "independently of 1 party. Nothing was more dangerous than 'to trust public men—no matter whom — } with these large sums of money. The I pressure always immediately brought to bear upon them from all sides was more ! than human nature could resist. .He could not agree with the amendment, bocause he thought there was some ground for a moderate loan of £1,000,000, such, as had already been guaranteed by the Home Government. This was a reasonable and proper proposal; but there was a vast difference between one million and ten, and the extravagant scheme of the Government would excite the wonder and horror of English capitalists. In the financial statement, which he hold in his hand, he saw a proposal for a railway from Auckland to Wanganui through Taupo, with connexion to Napier and New Plymouth. A railway to Taupo! [Great laughter.] There was one also proposed from Picton to Queenstown in the other island, with branch lines to about twent? other places, and the Government had actually drafted a bill to cany these plana into effect before the country had been surveyed for the purpose, or the expense estimated. He wished the amendment befora them had been more moderate j for he could not support it in its present form. Mr Wilson, who had been heartily applauded throughout his speech, sat dowu amid loud cheers.

The amendment was then put and negatived by a considerable majority, only about twenty hands being raised in its favor. The Chairman was then putting the original motion, when Mr J. jN. Wii-son came forward and moved the following amendment: —

That this meeting is of opinion that the proposals of the Government are extravagant, and that although a moderate loau for the promotion of immigration and the development of the Colony—• such as the loan of £1,000,000 proposed to ba guaranteed by the Home Government—would ba advantageous, no engagements of the magnituda proposed by the Government can safely be entertained.

Mr J. Watt seconded the amendment, and in doing so would point out a fact which seemed to have been overlooked by the meeting—that the Cornuussioners for the Colony had obtained tha Imperial guarantee to a loan of £1,000,000 on condition that no further loans were undertaken. If the proposed plans were carried into effect, faith would be broken with those who had advanced the million, and the Commissioners would be placed in a very unenviable position. The amendment was then put, and the show of hands was about two to one in it* favor.

The Chairman : The amendment is lost.

A roar of indignation, and cries of " No, ,io," " Pat it again," " The ayes have it," &c, followed this decision. After some delay, the question was put,* and the number of hands was this time about three to one in its favor. The amendment was then declared to be carried, and the result was received with loud cheers.

A -vote of thanks to the chairman having been proposed, the meeting dispersed at about 8 30 p.m.