THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 170, 10 July 1876, Page 2

THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

[COMMUMIOATED.] The Financial Statement— quasi lucus a non lucendo I— becausa there is hardly any statement about the finances of the colony in it. No one who read Major Atkinson's statement last year which bristled with figures enough to give a College boy a headache, can fail to contrast it with the diffuse, cloudy, ambiguous, and eminently unsatisfactory speech of his leader. The one requires close attention and careful perusal, but it is singularly clear and easy to be understood, and is a full and truthful account of our financial position at the time; tbe other is just the reverse— it does not even 'Btate what the revenue and expenditure were during the year jmt expired, and the only idea that comes out free from ambiguity is that we must, if we can, borrow two millions more. It is probably the most telling speech against Abolition that will be delivered this seesion, for the awful muddle in which, according to Sir Ju'ius Yogel, everything is now, and the worse muddle into which everything wl'l be thrown after the abolition, are eaough to deter the strongest-minded politician from changing the status quo, at present. The readers ot thiß paper who have perused the series of artic'es which recently appeared on " The Financial Condition of tbe Colony," will h -ve been prepared for the two moat unwelcome statements of the speech, namely that the revenue had not come up to the estimates, and that thero would have to be a new loan. They hsve als. been shown the mo ie in which the so-cal'ed surplus has been mmufactured by taking the money from the Public Works Loan, and by the issue of Treasury Bills to a sufficient amount to pay half-a-year's interest on loans. When after obtaining by these means nearly half amtllion, a Colonial Treasure gets up in a Committee of the whole House, and talks about a surplus, we see in imsgin-tion the sort of wink he wunk when he did so. This wss of course done in order to go Home by the Suez mail which sailed from the Bluff t_e day after the statement was made. Now Carlyle said of the people of Great Britain some years ago, that they were «• t*enty-eeven millions —mostly fooU}" bat he did not say they were all fools, and he certainly would have excepted the financiers of the City of London from his description. And when these gentlemen learn that the Premier of New Z aland talked about a . urplus of revenue over expenditure in the year in which ha had borrowed four millions sterling and spent it, to commence a year in which he wants to lorrow two millions more and spend that, they will arrive at the conclusion that the word surplus has somehow changed its meaning at the antipodes. The Sultan of Turkey and the Kbeiive of Egypt hive both, for a number of yews past, had a surplus of this kind, but strange to say they hare both become bankrupt. When the Prodigal Son of modern days goes home to his "governor" to confess his manifold sins and wickedness, and to make a clean breast about his pecuniary liabilities, he doe. not wait until he is famished and In rags; be generally has in hia pocket a few aovereigns from the last bill that be got discounted by the Jews, and he goes down to his father's place in the country In a neat knickerbocker suit of the latest fashion, and in a first-class carriage. But when h_ comes , to discuss the question of ways and means with the gentleman whom he 'irreverently I terms "the relieving officer," h. does not talk of the few loose sovereigns he has in his portemonnale as " a surplus." Sir Julius Yogel seems to be of the s .m. opinion as Sheridan, who, when he had signed a promisa iry note at thre^ month*, exclaimed " Thank God ! that's done with I" Of course Sir Julias deceives no one in New Zealand with his so-called surplus, and if he thinks that he deceives people at Home he only shows that ignorance of English people and their habits which is naturally te to be expected from a man of foreign extraction. He cannot understand that there are hundreds of men out here who belong to the class from which the money for national loans is ultimately obtained. The Rothschilds and other great London financiers do not take up foreign loans for purposes of Investment, but to sell -gain. They know, though Sir Julius Yogel apparently does not, that the people who re_ily lend their money, are moderately rich people, who have surplus cash for which they want to receive as high an interest as they cm get consistently with absolute security. Such people look at 5 per cent., or a little more, as about the limit they can reach in any Home investments. When tbey see that Turkey or Egypt, or the South American Republics, are giving 7 or 8 per cent., they are sometimes deluded into lending to them, because they have been so long accustomed to the absolute secut ity of the English Funds, that they cannot, until sad experience has taught them the contrary, believe that an established Government will fail to pay the dividends on its debt. About these places, in which few Englishmen reside, these peop'e have no one to consult, and no one on whose opinion they can rely. But almost every family of wealth and respectability has some ooe or other ot its members in New Zealand or Australia, and although asarule.they would not give any of these banished relatives a fi.ty-pound note to save them from dying of .tarvation— at the Antipodes— they have quite sufficient self-denying affection for them to spend sixpence on a letter asking them what they think of an investment in a New Zealand Loan. What the aaaves w<mld be, nobody here needs to be

toll. The maiden aunt with a few thousands to invest, or the rich uncle in the same position, can remember that their nephew is in Australia, and that they really ought to write to the dear boy. So a couple of months afterwards the " dear boy " receives a letter with the well-remembered post mark, which he opens carefully, fondly hoping that a "Srst of exchange" may drop out, and is generally disappointed. But he answers the letter all the same, and if he has not found the Souhera Hemisphere quite the Tom Tiddler's grouad he anticipated, he writes a very fu'lcolored description of the state and prospects of the colony to hi* loving friends which will nat have the eft ct of induing them to invest m New Z aland Loacs This is the proc=ss which quietly connceractsi the puffs ia the Home paper?, and the gaily-tinted telegrams se -t for publication to the Agent- General. It is difficult to deal with such a discursive speech as the Colonial Treasurer's in anything but an equally discursive manner. It is literally de omnibus rebus et quibuadam aliis. Primary education, roa!« and brilges, the conservation of State Forests, the maintenance of Hospitals, Athena. im§, the sa'o of debentures, the dia.rid_._ioa of the L .nd Fand. the taking over of tho Provinces, and a hundred other topics, are touched upon. Aa regards the Land-fund, it appears to vi that Sir J. Yogel has been singularly injudicious. He nibbles at it when he ought to have swallowed it The Crown Lands of the colony ought, like the Crown Lands of every other British colony, to belong to tha colony as a whole, and not to fractional parts of it. As for tho Compact of 1856 it is all bosh The Compact of 1856 is simply an Act passed by -the Parliament of New Zealand, for the benefit, it waa supposed, of the whole colony, and the same power that passed the Act can repeal it when it is no longer of benefit to the colony. This is the common sense way of viewing the matter. We in Nelson Province can look at the transaction with perfect impartiality, fra- if thore is one thing more certain than another, it is that the immeuse mineral resources of this province must in the long run make its waste lands of enormous value. Five aud twenty or thirty years at the outside will not pass before this becomes the richest part of the colony. Even in " Sleepy Hollow " the next generation will not continue to import coal from New South Wales, and copper and iron from Europe when they miy be had for the digging in their own province. But for all tlut we should be the last to advocate the entire absorption of the Lind Fund by the navicular lo.alities in which the land is situ ited. P. should be all thrown into the Consolilated Fund, and such local works as are of general importance and valne paid for out of the general fund. The scheme of Sir Julius Yogel will pease nether the Provincialists nor the Abolitionists. The Provincialists in Otago want .to have &\ their fund to themselves, and tbey will never consent to the insertion of what they justly think " the thin edge of the wedge." On the other hand unfortunate Auckland will share to a very limited extent in the advantages of abolition, and if we understand the Tre.sur.r aright, any advances made to her will be counted as a debt, To throw all charitable {institutions suddenly on the voluntary contribution? of the public is not a way to add to the popularity of the Treasurer's plans It may lead to some very serious complications. For example, in Otago, the Hospitals, the Athenseams, the Industrial Schools, the Benevolent Institutions, are all mainly dependent on grants from Provincial revenue. It would be very awkward if a period of distress and short work were to occur, and these institutions were at the same time to fall short of funds. If the Colonial Treasurer had boldly declared thit the whole of the waste lands should belong to the colony, and had proposed a loan on the security of the unsold lands, or, in pain language, had mortgaged them, he would have bad no difficulty in raising a loan of tea, in place of what the facetious "F." calls " a paltry two millions I"

The appointment of John Turnbull Thompson, Esq., as Surveyor-General for the colony is gazetted. The Wellington City Council have resolved to make a grant of £150 to each of the two Fire Brigades, to be spent iv the erection or maintenance of engine rooms and reading rooms. An annual grant of £100 to each Brigade towards general expenses is also promised. The Home correspondent of the Otago Daily Times writes:— A fine steam yacht for the Marquis of Normanby was launched in the Clyde last month. She is named the Stella, and is 250 tons register, with engines of 75 horse power, A lady named Lucy Brownlow, who had for some little time been engaged in teaching the Catholic School at Tokoinairiro, met her death under very strange circumstances on the evening of Monday, 12th June. It that while she was engaged in taking her tea, a piece of bread stuck in her throat, and there being no aid at hand, she was suffocated. • She was found the followiag morning, still sitting at her table, but lifeless. The Inangahua Times says that there appears to be something akin to a popular craze in the Inangahua regarding the Teremakau rush. Dozens of miners have been leaviag Reefton each week for a month past, and the fever is now at its height. A Dunedin telegram in the Post of Saturday says:— The Tuapeka Times last week published the following paragraph, which was copied into the Dunedin Evening Star, the Bruce Herald, and other provincial papers: — "It is reported that a Rev. Father of the Roman Catholic Church in Dunedin has thrown off the trammels of the church, and followed the example of Pere Hyacinthe, of Parisian celebrity, by taking unto himself a wife. The fair one is said to possess considerable personal charms, and at one time is said to have been numbered with the Dunedin Sisters of Mercy." Mr Bell, of the Dunedin Evening Star, has been summoned to the Resident Magistrate's Court on Tuesday, to answer an action for libel for publishing this statement. The Tuapeka Times has also been served with a writ for publishing the same statement. The Tablet to.day says j — U A notorious, shocking, and cruel lie has been published almost simultaneously in certain Otago newspapers. The statement thus circulated is so Hotoriously false that the conductors of these newspapers are without a shadow of excuse for their unmanly and unjustifiable conduot. This base calumny has caused a great deal of pain, not only to the Catholic clergy of DunedJD, bi_. to all Catholics ia this, j :

diocese. A criminal action has been commenced against the proprietors and publishers of the Star and Tuapeka rimes, in the interests of truth aud justice." Mr Macassey has been retained for the prosecution in the case against Mr Bell, and Mr James Smith for the defence.