COLONIAL TAXATION.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 1, Issue 32, 5 August 1867, Page 194

COLONIAL TAXATION.

(Nelson Examiner.) no. XIV. Thebe are now only two considerable items in our colonial - expenditure upon which we have not remarked, and* we are sorry to say, found great reason to complain of. These two departments are those of Law and Justice, and of Colonial Defence. The cost of the first of these is certainly very large as compared with the numjjgsr of persons to be benefitted by its operations-. .This year we pay nearly £70,000 for law and . justice in New Zealand. The total, as we. have said, is very large, but it is not quite so heavy 'as it appears to be. Under.this, head of Law and Justice, there is a sum of nearly £IO,OOO spent -in keepiqg up the Land arid Deeds Registry department, which, closely . connected as- it is with law, is hardly within the popular idea of a department of-Law-and Justice.;- It. would pear .that .the Supreme. Courts cost about £12,000-5 the District ‘Courts, -£4,500; Coroner’s, about £2,000 ; Criminal Prosecutions, £10,0.00$ and finally, Resident Magistrates’ Courts, < £30,600 ; . or- < more than half- of the ,sum;spent upon law and justice .proper in the colony. - We have gone into, this analysis of the cost of-these departments.because ifc.appears.tO' us that .the people cannot possibly be too .well

aware what it is they are paying for. Nothing is so common,' hardly anything so. injurious to a; as the .ready acquiescence of the taxpayers in a sort of gene* ral belief, that the Government know£. best'about spending the money , which'they pay. In one sense unquestionably, Government does know best about these matters; but there is another irnwhich-an Executive; like ours is perhaps. the ( worst judge of all as to what should be spent, and what may be saved. Traditions subsist in all places, .and, more or .less,affect every one, but nowhere are they "so numerous or so' influential as in Government departments. That which has been,the custom there strives very hard to continue the custom, and few statesmen are found bold enough to struggle very, hard against its influence. . The public, however, .hasno such difficulty to contend with, and'its influence ought always to act ;as the counterpoise to that of the red tape of public offices. The item of most startling dimensionsamongst those we have to consider, is that for Resident Magistrates’ Courts. The need of a large expenditure upon these can hardly be denied by any one. _Eyeu those persons who most strongly object tothe extension of Resident .Magistrates* Courts to all our scattered country districtsdo not, as a rule, mean to advocate doing away with them in our towns and principal centres of population. There pan be littledoubt that the decisions of a competent man, making the study of cases his daily employment, must have a great advantageover those of gentlemen who perhaps have no acquaintance with law and no experience in the value of evidence to guide them in their decisions. Of the advantages possessed by the institution of Justices of the Peace where really sensible men are chosen, there can be no doubt, and we do not at present propose to dis* cuss these. The fact seems quite clear that, even had they somewhat fewer advantages than they have, the present financial position of the colony, would, render it absolutely necessary to give them a fair trial. At present we are chiefly concerned with the cost of the ResidentMagistrates’ Courts as they now exist. That cost appears at once to be an excessive one. There are not more than fifteen or sixteen centres of population in the whole colony of sufficient extent to demand, a Resident Magistrate, in our opinion. Other places might like to have one, nodoubt, just as they might like to have manyother things which they cannot afford to; pay for; but we do not think there ara more than that number of places that might not be very well attended to by means of the local bench of Justices of the Peace. Of course we suppose the very serious responsibility attaching to the Government in this matter to be, conscientiously performed, and not to be treated . as'we have occasion to remark-that it has been treated of late. If we glance through the list of Resident Magistrates, however, we are at once struck by the apparently reckless way ia which they have been, appointed. In the Northern Island it is quite impossible to make out more thau eight or nine centres of population of suffi-. cient magnitude to call for a regularly constituted Resident Magistrates’ Courts, yet there are about thirty on the list receiving salaries. We have calculated minutely the amounts paid, and we find that at least £IO,OOO, out of the £30,000 expended on Resident Magistrates’ Courts, was spent upon courts which ought to have h£d noexistence. While the sum put down forthe Native department is something less than £30,000, it is ingeniously eked out by the addition of some £IO,OOO worth of Resident Magistrates and tbeir clerks, whoare kept solely for the benefit of districts where only natives require their services; land then, as we have before p.ointod out, only in cases where they can make something by them. Resident Magistrates’ in districts where there are more natives than , Europeans, are a very costly nuisance indeed. They are useless for any purpose of restraining the natives • they are gene- , rally equally useless for administering anything like equal justice, to the settlers. . They look upon themselves, and-the settlers, invariably look upon them, as mere Maori advocates, who have a sort of commission to solder up difficulties, with the natives by quietly giving them all their own way. If, in such districts as these the bench of local justices were left to administer justice, no one could doubt that, with a careful choice of men—and. good men are to be had in every district—substantial justice would be. far; more, safe, and would cost hardly anything to the colony. The sum of £lp',ooo may seem a small One to save out of so large a total as the : £70,000 put down' for our Law and Justice, but we contend rather for a principle, thau a particular saying. Wa have po faith in economy by cheese-paring, but we . maintain that what is wanted is a ‘spirit of economy which shall animate every department of our The centres , of our population are rapidly, increasing , in numbers, " and country districts'‘ are growing so populous that they almost claim to be'important centres themselves. If some cheek is not at once put upon the , reckless extension of Magistrates’ .Courts,, now, and something less expensive substituted largely,' we -shall . find that our expenditure for law and justice-is. one of the most seriously, .increasing, items ..in the. whole range of our establishments. _ The £IO,OOO now, as wre believe;, ‘worse, than, wasted upon* Resident Magistrates’ and other- Courts, in the Northern Island, would afford a considerable,,margin for the necessary growth qf the department, .aud. to- force the Government to sweep away.. a .number of these, would prove a most wholesome' lessdn 1 to* them with respect to their futureCourse.' • < J. '

NO. XV.

We have now concluded our-investigation of the .various beads of colonial expenditilre. Ve have found that our .central Government has been guilty of great ex* "travagance in its administration, both in ■the work which it has attempted to do, uud in the • way it tried to do it. Hardly a single, branch of, .colonial expenditure seems to be free from the very serious •charge of unduly extended patronage, and a very objectionable amount of red-tapism. In every direction we see Government becoming dearer instead of cheaper as the population increases ; officials multiplied in a greater ratio than revenue; taxes to & greater extent than the resources of the colony can bear without serious injury. We have not, however in this survey exhausted alt our Governments by any means. The General Government is found to be a heavy burden, and a hard taskmaster ; but in New Zealand it is only •one of many Governments, each of which imposes its own burdens upon the people, Provincial system of this colony has been subject of more praise and heavier blame than almost any other form of Government we have ever heard of. Its friends have been unable to see a flaw in its fair proportions from the first j its enemies have almost from the first, seen no ,good thing about it. It has never been difficult for the friends of Provincialism to point to the roads, bridges, and public works which are maintained by the Provincial Governmentloutof funds attheir disposal, and to compare these results so tangible and gratifying with those of the Colonial Government expenditure. On the other hand the retort has never failed ’the. centralist that these public works, of which the provinces are so proud, have been done by means of large loans which have sunk the country into debt, and in «ome measure at least with money which they have found the Colonial Government to raise whilst they threw on it the blame of excessive taxation. Such are the invectives rather than arguments which have marked the controversy betwen the Provincial and central parties in New Zealand, .and we believe them to he most unprofitable. In all such controversies there too much tendency to look back and dwell the past, too little to examine impartially the position of the matter at present. It as easier to point triumphantly to our own good deeds and our adversaries’ failures past than to prove that our own scheme holds out any promise of future excellence.

The origin of our Provincial Governments was a very simple one. When powers of self-government were first entrusted to the colonists, it was frit that, •divided as they were into a number of •distinct communities having Utile communication with one another, nothing of the nature of a central government could attend to matters of .purely local concern J.h6 roads, bridges, immigration, Burveys &c, had to be placed under the control of local bodies acquainted with the circumstances of the cases, and the needs and resources of the various districts. TLi« was the intention with which provinces were made a part of our original constitution, and there can be no doubt that in thts way they have, for the most part, been of very great, use. The question for consideration now i 3, however, not so much one bl the past as of the future—not so mucb what they have done, as what they are now doing, or about to do, for the country. This must be considered exactly on the same principle on which we have considered the former part of our subject under the heads of Colonial Government expenditure, and we must ask ourselves what Provincial Governments do for us. and what we pay for their services. It is by an examination of this kind, after all, that any popular institution such as Provincialism or. Centralism, must stand or fall. It is quite vain to think of trading upon former virtues, when the question is one of the present; it is equally, useless to speculate upon how a condition of things yet undeveloped will affect any given institutions if they are felt to be economical and effective in the meantime.

We have said that Provincialism has done good service to the colonv, but the question .that we have now to 'discuss is, What is it doing now ? The management of waste lands, of immigration and of public works may be considered the especial functions of the Provincial Governments of New Zealand. First, then, of the waste lands. The North and South are very differently situated in this respect and must be separately considered. In the North, till within the last two vears, the Government was the sole manager of waste lands. All the lands in the islands uot in European hands were waste lands of the Crown so far as the .European purchaser was concerned, because he could only buy from the Government. Now the Provincial. Governments of the North haye but little land, and are not likely to got more. There will soon be no waste tends to administer, because all that the European has not yet got will be in the hands of the native seller, who will sell to one tether than to Government, it is hardly too much to say that, in the Northern Island of New Zealand, a very few years will probably see the test of Government administration of waste tends, and that even now. that administration has sunk into a matter of second or, .third-rate importance. In the South it is different to a. considerable extent; and yet if we trust the accounts given of the position ot the.landed estates of. the various provinces by the press, we cannot fail to see that the importance of the' waste lands is on the decline. .Jt ip. said tliat in a lew years more the magnificent tended estates in CanterPW r y will have - been . alienated = almost

entirely; while in Nelson the proposal to alienate at one blow nearly all we have left of it, has mot with universal approbation. If this is the oase, the provinces’ occupation is gone, so. far as the waste lands are concerned.

. But there is still immigration to be considered and this is work which has been, on the whole, well done by the provinces ; while we believe it would not be well done, and, in fact, had better not be attempted, by a General Government of the colony. To this the reply' may be made that henceforth our immigration will require to be unforced and natural. The gold-fields have done much to force this conviction on the people of this island, and other things have combined to make the Provincial Governments of the North come to the conclusion that no extensive scheme of immigration to their provinces can really be pursued with any benefit. The main point, however, is that of public works. Every one knows what has been done in this way by the Provincial Governments in in the different provinces. In some cases the results' have been more gratifying than in others but in all they have been, and still are tangible. We can use our roads and bridges; and even the costly harbor and railway works which have been confessedly beyond the means of some provinces that have undertaken them, are substantial, though, it may be, costly benefit. It is useless to say that these things are trifles, or to leave them unnoticed, for every one knows their importance to himself, and feels that he has in them a tangible return for his money, which he has not always, not perhaps often, in the expenditure of the General Government. The cost may be great-, and not only heavy, debts may have resulted from them, but a heavy share of taxation may' go to their account; yet the public will not, and ought not to believe that this is an expenditure that can be got rid of Railway loans indeed may have been mistakes, but even railways increase the wealth, of the people and may eventually pay. In any case roads and bridges, wharves and harbors, are necessary to the prosperity of the country, and if the money does not come from the Customs three-eighths it must come from some kind of taxation, so that the saving will be scarcely appreciable. Tn fact the public must see this, that so far as economy and efficiency go it is only a question of one sort of administration s gainst another l’he money must be spent on roads, therefore the money must be raised by taxation —and it matters little by what particular form of taxation it may be. Thus we consider it evident that in the state of things now existing the question of Provincialism or l entralism simply amounts to this. Are the evils of the present mode of administering our provincial expenditure such as to override the considerable benefits we have experienced and still do experience from it ? Ana to this question we hope to return in our next is.-.ue.