Hawke's Bay Times. Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1871.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 18, Issue 1156, 26 October 1871, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1871.

Mr, Yogel's proposition to save ,£50,000 from the current year':? expenditure, and at the same time double the subsidies to the Provincial Road Boards by devoting £IOO,OOO of the loan to that purpose, is as good an illustration of his whole policy as it is possible to wish for. There is, in fact, iio saving whatever. On the contrary, the .£50,000 which, undep last year's arrangements, should have been devoted ±o the aid of local taxation for ordinary road purposes, is retained in the hands of the Government, and, if available, will be used for General Government expenditure, while the loan, which yyas to be devoted to reproductive works only, is made to do (he duty that should be borne by ordinary revenue. The appropriating of any portion of the loan to the subsidising of Road Boards is something like the conduct of a merphant would be, who borrowed mpney for the purpose of enlarging and decorating his premises—-justifiably, perhaps, pnder certain circumstances, but certainly not in the face of a rapidly decreasing income, as is the case at present wjth the colony. The method Mr. Vogel has adopted |q make income meet expenditure is jggt the rational one of contracting and

reducing expenditure to the limits of revenue, but to draw on the future. Thus, last year's accounts show an abso lute deficit of £1 36,000, and the work of a true statesman would be to devise means to pay off that deficiency, and prevent anything of the kind from occurring during the current year. Instead of this, he proposes to borrow for the purpose, and spread the payment of the debt oyer a series of years ; the funds for paying the annual instalments and the interest to. be provided by additional taxation—that i* by a duty on cereals and timber, and an increase of stamp duties. Surely Mr Vogel cannot mean to assert that there is no room for reduction in the departmental expenditure of the Government. Yet this is a task he has shown himself unable to accomplish. Still he us to credit him with having effected a scheme of retrenchment, which scheme, on examination, proves to be removing certain items of expenditure from tlie ordinary to the loan account, simply putting off the payment to a future day, and imposing new taxes to meet the interest as it ■JO T - falls due. It seems that he has yet to learn that getting into debt is anything different from retrenchment.