THE THREE MILLION LOAN.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 234, 26 July 1865, Page 3

THE THREE MILLION LOAN.

(Condensed from the 1 Press?)

We publish a statement of the expenditure of the Three Million Loan, up to the 31st March, 1865. The total amount is £1,579,143. In addition to this £500,000 has been paid to the Home Government, making in all £2,079,143. These are the actual payments out of the chest. But in this we see no payment to the Home Government on account of her Majesty's forces, which, as our readers are aware, is now charged at the rate of £4O a man, for, we believe, about 12,000 men; a charge of little less than £500,000 a year. The current rate of expenditure is, we believe, about £40,000 a month; and there is besides the compensation to settlers and natives guaranteed under the Settlements Act, and the provision for the Whitaker immigrants who still continue to arrive. It is therefore pretty clear that the remaining million is engaged for, and that Mr Fitzherbert's statement last November that the whole loan was practically spent was perfectly correct. Of the expenditure up to last March, one million was on account of the Colonial force, an item for which there is no return in any shape whatever, unless the land acquired from the Maoris can be deemed to be such a return. As yet however it has returned nothing whatever. Certain settlers have been put upon some of it. That may be their gain; the State gains nothing, that is to say gains no off-set against the cost of obtaining it. Whether when all the settlers are located, and all claims for compensation satisfied, there will be any thing left for sale remains yet to be seen. At present the loss to the country is total aud absolute. It may be written off in the ledger as bad debt. To this may be added about £140,000, paid in compensation to the Taranaki settlers. Out of the whole two millions all which leaves behind it any valuable consideration, such as the cost of immigration, surveys, public works, lighthouses, telegraphs, &c., may be put down at about £260,000 i that is, about 13 per cent of the expenditure leaves a result; the rest is pitched into the sea or blown away in smoke. We say that all this money is wasted, because no result at all has been attained. Some persons consider all money spent in war to be wasted. But putting aside that extreme theory, there is no question about the waste in the present instance; because that which the expenditure was intended to buy is not obtained. The Queen's authority is not established nor her laws in force in any part of the Colony, iu which they were not so before the money was spent. And so far from the war having helped to bring about a settlement of the Native difficulty it is the difficulty and complexity of the questions which the war has raised which constitute, together with the rankling sense of the gross injustice of the whole thing, the main obstacles to any peaceful settlement of the present difficulty. It is clear, therefore, that all our money up to the present time has been spent, not in obtaining poace or establishing law, but in preventing the one and subverting the other.

The ' Nelson Examiner' says :— 11 Mr Bird, the telegraphic engineer, has arrived with full instructions to commence operations on the tele* graph between this and Christchurch at once and with energy. The line to be taken is up the Hokitika to the Kanieri township ; thence across country to the Hoho or Three-mile diggings; thence across the Arahura, striking it, if possible, above the Maori reserve; and thence up the Kawhaka, a tributary, striking the Tere makau gorge ; thence by the Otira and Waimakariro to Christchurch." From the ' Dunstan Times ' we learn that the river still continues to fall rapidly, and there is every prospect of its continuing to do so. In a week's time we may expect to see many of the beaches being worked to advantage. It is to be hoped that miners will profit by the experience gained in former seasons of the fickle nature of the river, and will pile their washdirt out of the reach of the flood, instead of washing up at the time. Should they do this, they may be able to secure the greater part of the gold in their claims, and not, as has often occurred, when having but just tasted the sweets of fortune, a sudden and unexpected flood has occurred, and they have in consequence lost the greater part of the fruits of their labor.

The correspondent of the * Nelson Examiner' reports the following scene at Hokitika.—" On Saturday night last a serious collision occurred between the police, in the execution of their duty, and a set of cowardly ruffians, who got three of them down and kicked and trampled on them in a brutal manner. On the arrival of the police, the scoundrels ran away. Afterwards Mr Sale, the Inspector, and detective Howard, walked round the town (the time was between one and two, midnight) to see that all was again quiet, when they met three men coming from the scene of the row. The detective, in an insinuating manner, feigning himself to be a companion, said to one of them,' Well, what of it ?' The man, innocently enough, said,' Oh! such a spree, we have been hammering the bobbies.' Much to their surprise, they were at once arrested and conveyed to prison. The Resident Magistrate committed one to take his trial at the next Assizes, and two others he condemned to the utmost penalty he could inflict, (two months' imprisonment) and animadverted severely on the crowd of men—they could not be diggers—who could stand quietly by, and see three or four men brutally ill-treatea by quadruple their number."