Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, JULY 12, 1881.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 164, 12 July 1881, Page 2

Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, JULY 12, 1881.

Wb have now received the full text of the Financial Statement delivered last Wednesday night, togeiher with the compendious t.bles attached thereto, and aspo3sib)y ninetonths of our readers did not attempt to wade through the lengthy telegram which we published ou Thursday we will endeavor in as concise a form as possible to place btfore them its main features so far as they bear upon the financial condition of the colony. First of ail, then we are after a careful perusal of the Statement, quite able to undir sand the pleasure and satisfaction which the Treasurer experienced in making it, because, aa he tells us, " after closing tbe accounts of the year ended 31st March, 1881, we can see our way to provide out of ordinary revenue for the liabilities outstanding at that date, with every prospect of a fair margin of receipts in excess of expenditure at the end of the year." Now tbis, it must be admitted, after the gloomy state of Effairs disclosed in 1879, and the very little more cheerful statement or last year, is exceedingly gratifying and encouraging, hut it must not be supposed that we have insensibly glided into tbis more 9ecure pos'.iion, with nothing to remind us ; of the dangers we have escaped beyond the reductions that have been made in tbe cost of administration. There ia a much more forcible reminder than this. The result of the " lavish and rapidly increasing expenditure " under the late Government has been that in order to clear off old scores and start with a clean sheet we had to increase our debt by £1.000,000 raised on Treasury bills. Tbis, tbe Treasurer tells us, is wbat we bav« had to pay for a couple of years' extravagance. He does not add, " See that you don't do it again," but possibly be thinks tbat without any such warning the people of 1 New Zealand will take the lesson to heart, and that the caution is unnecessary. A million down, or £50,000 a year until the principal is paid, is a pretty heavy penalty to pay fof two years' riotous living, but such is the fact aud there is no escape from it. i Sow let us look at the result of last year's financing. It will be remembered that in the session of 1880 the House waß in an economical mood, the like of which has never been known in the history of the New Zealand Parliament, and that they cut and slashed away at tbe estimates in a merciless manner. Tho savings they then effected amounted in all to a very large Bum, and still wa fied the Treasurer able to come down this year and inform the House that " the services of the year have been performed for rather less than the votes," and, he adds, "considering the searching revision to whicn' tbe Estimates were subjected by tbe Committee of Supply, this will probably be thought very satisfactory." With regard to the actual as compared with the estimated revenue of iast year we find that the former proved' to be £114,039 less than the latter. This is almost entirely owing to the absurdly sanguine expectations forffled by the Treasurer of the probable railway receipts for the year. For this he was much ridiculed at I the time, and the event has proved that tbe scoffers were right. The railway receipts were estimated at £950,000; tbey realised £838.622, a falling off of £111,377, thus accounting for nearly the whole of the dif ference between the estimated and the actual receipts. There was also a deficiency of £20,000 in the yield of tbe Property Tax, and of £12,500 in that of the Telegraphs ; but the Customs and Stamp duties, which form a reliable commercial barometer, show an increase, the one of £57,634 and the other of £10,886. The public debt, we are informed, has now arrived at a trifle over thirty millions, a very creditable sum, surely, for a colony a little over forty years old, and with a population of something under half a million. Some information regarding our loans, contained in one of the tables appended to the Statement, is interesting as showing, when once we bad commenced drinking at the fountain of borrowed money, how kindly we took to tbe process, and how loth we were to discontinue it. It was in 1870 that Sir Julius Vogel cast his spell over the country and tickled its imagination with the glowing picture he painted of the result that would inevitably follow a borrowing policy. So we commenced to borrow tbat very year, and in the table showing ■'« the total ways and means of tbe public works fund," we find in the first line, " Immigration and public works loan, 1870, £4,000,000." Those 4 millions were so very acceptable and the spending of them was so exceedingly pleasant that in threa years' time we went again to the English capitalists, and in the table before us we find another line, "Immigration and public works loan, 1873, £2,000,000," and for the Fame year there appears another little item — " General purposes loan, 1873 £750,000. This 2£ millions acted like a few drops of bitters before dinner ; it increased our appetite wonderfully, and the result iB again shown in the tell-tale table : "Immigration and public works loan, 1874 £4,000,000." On this pittance, by dint, no moder_____9^Hß^B^^^B^BHHßH| I our resolution. WedUraH9^H[^E9E[ on the table is "New Zealand loan 1879 £5,000,000," and the driblets which have thus flowed into the country, at intervals of two years or so, amount in all to the respectable total of £18,700,000 raised in ten years for immigration and publio works purposes Leaving the subject of loans and returning to that which has a more immediate interest for us, namely, the revenue and expenditure for the year now current, we find that the latter as proposed by the Government is £334,000 less than that which appeared on their estimates for last year, which is sufficient proof that the work of retrenchment bss been entered upon, and is still being carried out vigorously. Towards making up this large total there is an item of £52 ,000 for contingent defence purposes which has been removed from the estimates, but as thia is owing to our improved relations with the Maoris, which have been partially brought about by the policy of tbe present Government, they consider tbat they are entitled to a share, at le»st, of the credit of having brough about sveh a reduction. Tbe i ordinary revenue for the year is estimated at £3.297,650, of which £1,826,000, are to be raised by taxation, wbile £1,340,000 will be derived from sources rendered, the railways being expected to contribute £910,000 to- | ward9 the total, and if they continue to yield ||s they have done during tbe first two months of the year, that amount will be under the mark. The total expenditure is estimated at £3,270,198 thus leaving a

surplus to credit of £21,451. The correctness or otterw.se of these anticipations we shall not have an opportunity of ascertaining until after the 31st March, 1882, although the quarterly returns will afford a fair indication of what tbe result is likely to be. The Treasurer congratulates the country upon tbe succe^ful working of the property tax and thc comparative ease wit' which it has been collected, and states hi3 intention of introduciog a Bill, the purport of which wiil be to bring eleven millions of foreign capital invested in New Zealand under the operation of the tax, the refiblt of whicb will be to add £45,000 a jear to the revenue; He further proposes to reduce the ttti for the year by one fourth by making the second half-yearly payment at the r .te of a halfpenny instead of a penny in the pound Now if all the Treasurer says about tbe lightness of the burden of the property tax be true, wo cannot but think that if there is to be a reduction of taxation to the extent of about £60,000 it might have been made in the direction of striking it off some of the Customs duties imposed upon articles largely used by the poorer classes. Sy so large a remission as he states it is in his power to make he might have afforded sensible relief to many who now find a difficulty in making two ends meet. We shall not refer to-day to the matter ot local finance as the proposals contained in the Statement will be more easily intelligible after we have before us the 6peech to be made to-night on the question of local government. We append to tbis article a couple of tables relative to the working of the property tax which wiil be found very interesting :—