The Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, JANUARY 29, 1907. FINANCIAL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3744, 29 January 1907, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, JANUARY 29, 1907. FINANCIAL.

‘ * As far as can be judged, ” to use the words of that prince of optimists, the Premier, at his farewell banquet, “New Zealand is in' a prosperous condition.” Apart from Government finances, which' certainly are not an adequate basis , for the calculation of the individual and collective wealth of the community, New Zealand is happily most prosperous. The revenue ot any country is in great part a demonstration of a Government’s povyer to tax the pepple. of course Premier. T sLL. pxbucL privilege to say that the Customs revenue had increased by the sum of ,£219,000. This may reflect the buying powers of the people, but it certainly proves that we are still dreadfully dependant on outside manufacturers for most of the finished products we use. The country would not be less prosperous if there had been no increase in the customs returns, provided that New Zealanders had themselves manufactured to a degree, making it unnecessary to import the goods that represented the increase in customs revenue. To call the increase of customs revenue a good thing is like rejoicing at the fact that land has gone up from £2 an acre to ,£2OO. The spending power of the people, who are still willing to send much of their money abroad, is the reason for the publication of startling figures. If the people really spent their money in New Zealand there would be less striking figures to be unctously orated at public feeds. We do not wish to demonstrate that the people are not well to do, but merely to show that the people would most probably be still better off if the figures were smaller. New Zealand ' surpluses are the funniest .things outside a comic opera. There is another of these quaint Wnimals about r now. It Hoesn ’ t

is announced as being at large and that is all the people know about it. If the Government wants a loan of one million pounds and the Government has three-quarters of a million surplus, does the Government ask the British money-lender for a quarter of a million only and make the three-quarters of a million it has in hand work ? Not a bit of it. It gets the million when there is apparently a string of surpluses as long as a railway train in hand, of wherever the Colonial Treasurer keeps his. menagerie of these strange beasts. You will observe the small increase in the Land Tax compared with the huge increase in the Customs revenue. ,£56,000 ot an increase on the Land Tax means of course that the only thing thatcan really 'and truly bear the enormous taxation to which New Zealand is subjected does not receive its due share of attention, but that the common necessities of the people are loaded to bursting point. If enormous taxation Of the peoples’ necessities in order to raise money to pay .interest on money used in unreproducfive ways is better prosperity than .small taxation on the necessities"' and large home manufactures we. haven’t learned our lesson, The' statemeiit'by the Premier thdt \Ye are furiously prosperous merely because we are paying lots of money away for small returns is" greeted with ‘ loud applause,’ ‘ cheers ’ and so on. The Premier ask^d-the colony to cheer him because iti.had been, possible to renew loans- and ‘credits in London. Everything in the garden was lovely. The storekeeper who owes his merchant one thousand pounds is bubbling over with prosperity because the merchant does not intend to sue him for a month! ; This is the logic of the Premier’s, conclusion. , You remember that the immortal Mr Micawber had a habit of presenting .his creditors with an 1.0. U. with a‘great flourish and with the words “-Thank heaven that’s paid!” N.Z. is in the habit of repaying loans by creating a sinking fund which she uses to build a new railway station or a customs-house, in the meantime discharging her obligation to the London moneymerchant by promising to pay again. New Zealand has, according to the Premier, just set aside the thrilling sum of ,£40,000 in order to begin a settlement of debts contracted and money expended during the Maori wars! If the colony isn’t careful it will get the war bills paid during the twentieth century. All this merely to show that the prosperity of the people is not necessarily the prosperity of the Treasury or at least the Treasury’s ability to show a handsome balance which actually does not belong to ‘the colony or its people. True, money in the Treasury means that although the money is not New Zealand’s the colony has,the handling of it, that, buy new estate's with it’, may make advances to settlers, may build new ministerial, residences and pay a batch of new Legislative Councillors their wages long before they commence to work. It means that an optimistic Ministry may boost its friends into lucrative billets and this is being done at a greater rate than even in ! the time of the late Premier. The people of the colony are foolish to take any notice of the figures fired off by any phblic man. No public man in the first place is sure of his figures. Secondly he doesn’t greatly care whether he adds a few ‘ noughts ’ or no, thirdly he is not responsible for the ■alleged or real prosperity and fourthly what he calls prosperity is borrowing from abroad and robbing from New Zealanders through the customs. The mere recital of . bushels of figures to a crowd of people whe are, mostly paid to cheer, isn’t any kind of evidence that is worth taking notice of. The best prosperity is the prosperity of production and not the prosperity of purchase. The. money that talks is the’money that is raised here and not the money that is sweated out of English slaves.- The surplus that is never •used is robbery, not finance. It’s as right to boast ot a surplus when a country is owing money as it is for a Benevolent Trust to boast about the 'money it has saved by starving the applicants for help. What do all 1 these gorgeous figures mean to the man who alone produces the real wealth ot the country, the struggling cocky and his kind. What does a huge Customs return mean to Jiim ? That he is. richer because df it? Don’t ask foolish questions. The colony is. so prosperous that figure-mongers cannot keep-it.back. Taxed as we are and governed by a crowd who exploit the people from Jan. Ist to Dec. 31st, try to fool all the people all the time, the colony still breathes. It is only on account of the real grit, the real wealth outside the Treasury that the country is able to bear up against the expenses of administration, the passion for splash and the sinful squandering of borrowed funds on needless undertakings, needless sycophants and needless alleged legislators of the aged Worm brand. The Worm brand and others howl themselves hoarse at Ward’s figures, fill his pockets with public gold and send him winging to Europe twice in a twelvemonth, but the: aged Worms Billet Wrigglers, and the whole army of baskers in the sunshine of concession, don’t stir many fingers to give ;he man who pays Ward’s passage a show. Ward isn’t going to England to get roads tor the backblocks. He won’t say a word about the non-paying railways of New Zealand that twist away into the desert so that our fat ■ man shall. send his wool to market. He isn’t going to ask Downing-street for telephones, so that potential backblocks mothers

may not die in childbirth for want of a doctor. Ward isn’t going to cut up any land at tlu Conference in London. He’ll never have to jack his cart wheels out of the bog in the Strand. He will not make any impassioned speeches about the difficulties of backblocks schoolchildren or the dark lives of the people who teach them. Why should he ? He’s all right. And he has himself said that John Bull will renew. Its absolutely splendid—for Ward.