FINANCIAL SELF-RELIANCE. Keeping out of the Foreign Pawn Shop.

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 139, 28 February 1903, Page 8

FINANCIAL SELF-RELIANCE. Keeping out of the Foreign Pawn Shop.

NEW ZEALAND has got her million and a quarter all right, but the underwriters subscribed it. The great British investing public onlyfound 8 per cent, of the amount. They were .soared off, it seems, by the furious attack mad© by the London "Daily Mail" upon the Australian colonies, their frequent borrowings in the past, and the recent deficits in their State Treasuries. It did not matter one whit to the "Mail" that these loans', in most cases, have been spent on. reproductive works. It did not occur to it, perhaps, that the transference to the Commonwealth of many large lines of State revenue, before the State was able to cut its coat according to its reduced oloth, had helped largely to produce those deficits in State Treasuries 1 . And, of course, the terrible devastations of the drought counted for nothing. * * * A sensational article was wanted, and Australian borrowing seemed a likely subject, and the most was made of it. John Bull promptly buttoned up bis breeches pockets, and colonial securities took a run down in his estimation. New Zealand's credit suffered in, the general alarm. Why it should do so is a consequence of John Bull's dense ignorance of colonial geography. To nine out of ten people at Home, there is no distinction or difference between Australia and New Zealand. They ar© both in the same boat, parts of the same sterile continent where blacks abound, and where the sparse white population is engaged in chasing kangaroos when shearing is over and there is no more mutton to freeze. New Zealand is a small island, just a few miles off the mainland, with ferry boats plying at half-hourly intervals. * * After all, it might be a first-class th'ng for the colonies if John Bull kept his pockets buttoned up. There is plenty of money available amongst our own people, and if we borrowed more regularly from them, instead of running oft to the London pawn-shop to pop a few more securities every time we ran short, the advantages of keeping the interest in the colony would amply compensate foe the small amount extra we might have to pay. Colonial Treasurers have now and again raised money locally for immediate State requirements, and the response has usually been quite ample. * # * It would also have the effect of making us far more careful how we expended this borrowed money. There would be a greater necessity to make sure the outlay, would prove reproductive. In that way waste and extravagance would be checked. At the same time, there would be less dependence on the foreign money-lender, and less of a drain upon our resources to pay him his annual tribute in the shape of interest. We should make freer use of our own money, and become a more self-contain-ed community, with a greater regard for wise frugality in public affairs.