THE NEW GOVERNMENT.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 16, 13 May 1871, Page 12

THE NEW GOVERNMENT.

Now is the time for Mr Fitzherbert and Mr Bunny to display their administrative talents, and show what stuff they are made of. They have the opportunity afforded them of conferring lasting benefits on the province, and of earning for themselves at the same time an undying reputation— a reputation similar in kind if not in degree to that which the celebrated Sully acquired by services which, in a somewhat similar capacity, he rendered to his country in the hour of need. By his wise and vigorous policy France was raised from a condition of bankruptcy to one of prosperity, and even grandeur. When that famous Minister took office he found the country in the most deplorable state. The debts were enormous ; many of the provinces were entirely exhausted, and none of them were in a condition of bearing any new impesition. Sully beheld this state of things with horror, but he did not despair. Zeal for his country, and its very condition seemingly so desperate, animated his endeavors, and the noblest efforts that ever entered into the mind of a Minister entered into his. He resolved to replenish an empty treasury, not by the impoverishment, but through the prosperity of the people. The province of Wellington is not poor in the sense France was poor in the days of Sully. The amount raised by liquor duties and license fees, the rate of wages, and the difficulty of obtaining labor on any terms, prove the fact. The people of this province, unlike those of France, are not overburdened with direct taxes, which were made ten times more oppressive there by the vicious mode adopted in levying them. Our bankrupt treasury is owing to other causes. As a farmer may be poor because he is lazy, and a farm unproductive owing to the non-application of skill, labor, and capital, as well as from extravagance and profligacy in the one case, and a waste of means in the other ; so a low treasury may be owing to insufficient contributions, as well as from a reckless expenditure ; and so stagnation in business, and the absence of life and activity alike in Government and people, are more likely to arise from the one cause than the other. Taxes raised and expended in the country are but a transfer of value; the country is none the poorer by the process. If A. B. and C. pay to A., one of the three, A. B. and G. are as rich as they were before. If these taxes are expended on reproductive undertakings, or in paying the interest and sinking fund of a loan thus expended, then such taxes instead of making the province poorer would make it immensely more wealthy than it can ever become under the present vicious laissez-faire system. As was the other day incidentally pointed out by the Independent, if light taxation was a mark of wealth and good government, then Turkey would be the richest and best governed country in Europe, instead of being exactly the reverse. The province, like a farm, wants its latent resources developed by the application of skill and industry, capital and labor, and a judicious system of direct taxation is the means by which such application can be best insured. It is to be sincerely hoped that zeal for the province, and the very condition of the provincial treasury, seemingly so desperate, will animate the endeavors of the new Government; and that those endeavors, like those of the immortal Sully, similarly directed, may be crowned with a similar success.