OUR, AGENT – GENERAL AND COLONIAL LOANS.

Kumara Times, Issue 1994, 19 January 1883, Page 2

OUR, AGENT - GENERAL AND COLONIAL LOANS.

♦ In an article commenting on a paper read before the Royal Colonial Institute by Sir Prancis Dillon Bell, AgentGeneral for New Zealand, the Christchurch Press seems to think that much credit is due to New Zealand's Agent in the successful floating of the One Million Loan by the very able manner in which he brought British interests to bear on the subject. It says : " The Coloniel Institute affords the best possible means by which colonists may communicate with the British public or questions of interests common to both. For that purpose, an AgentGeneral who knows his business, can turn the institution to very good account. Sir Francis Dillon Bell, the Agent-C■■->•.-- d for New Zealand, has ma.';- >-e in that direction which

has unently successful. The colony ». ,i he represents having committed itself to a policy of continuous borrowing, the frequent and various criticisms of colonial finance, and above all, of colonial solvency, which appeared from time to time in the English. Press, naturally became a subject of concern to him. He wisely, however, avoided the blunder iuto which others in his

position have fallen, of attempting to answer those criticisms in detail. He did not scribble a lot of puffery about New Zealand in the newspapers. He scrupulously abstained from entering into a newspaper war on what are in reality mere matters of business. What is still mote to his credit, he did not lay himself out, as others have done, to say two words for himself while saying one for the colony. The course he took was this. He compiled a paper on the whole broad question of the public debt of Australasia, and he read it before the Colonial Institute just at the time when the approaching issue of several colonial loans was attracting much attention to the subject. He subsequently published his paper as a sixpenny pamphlet, in which form it has been widely circulated. We have read it with great care, and we are bound to 6ay it is an uncommonly able production.

" Without ostensibly singling out any colony for separate notice, Sir Dillon Bell nevertheless contrives to bring into prominence sundry facts about New Zealand which are calculated to set even the most self-satisfied Australians thinking. For instance, he shows, incidentally to a major line of reasoning, that New Zealand is already by far and away the premier agricultural colony, having 4,768,000 acres under cultivation, white South Australia, the next on the list, has but 2,574,000 acres. He also draws into

notice with much skill, the fact of the natural increase of population in this colony exceeding that in any other country, and he boldly predicts, on conclusive data, that at the end of the present century, New Zealand will be the foremost country of Australasia, with a population of 1,900,000."