GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 24, 8 July 1871, Page 2

GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE.

No. 1. If the number of harbors is a great advantage in a new country, enabling settlement to proceed simultaneously from many points, there can be no question, that they add very considerably to the difficulty and expense of collecting Customs duties. The official returns of the neighboring colonies show that there are in Victoria eight ports and six border stations, and in New South Wales eleven ports and six border stations. The great bulk of the Customs revenue, however, is collected at their respective capitals, Melbourne and Sydnev; and practically, for the purposes of comparison with New Zealand, these colonies may be said to have each only one principal port. In New Zealand there are twenty-eight ports (or as many as there are in Scotland), and eight preventive stations. Everyone, therefore, will be prepared to expect that the expense of collection must necessarily be greater here than in eitherof these colonies. A general who has only one citadel to garrison can do so at a smaller expenditure of money, and with a much smaller complement of men, than one who has got twenty-eight, and these, too, widely scattered. Nor will it be disputed that a'department fully equipped for doing the Customs busiuess of a country with 250,000 inhabitants will be able, with very little more expense, to do the business of one three times as populous ; in other words, that population, while it directly affects the Customs receipts, does not in the same ratio affect the departmental expenditure. This we illustrated lately by statistics from the Telegraphic Department, showing that while the wires had increased by hundreds of miles, and the receipts by thousands of pounds, the expense of the general managements rather diminished than increased. The same is true of the Customs or any other public department. If New Zealand had its population trebled, and if the new population were concentrated as in Victoria, the additional cost of collecting the greatly additional Customs revenue would be very small indeed. To expect, therefore, that a colony with a scattered population—one-third of the comparativelyconcentratedpopulationof its neigh bor, should be able to show the same ratio of depaitmental expenditure to receipts, would be an obvious injustice. But not only has Victoria three times the population—three times the number of Customs' customers ; but of that population a greater proportion consumes those articles paying the highest and most easily collected duties —or, to continue the figure, her Customs' customers " go in" for the articles which leave the widest margin of profit, and cause the least loss of time and trouble. The troth of the latter- assertion will appear, if we select that portion of New Zeaand containing a population most resembling that of Victoria, viz., Westland, and compare it with another hi which the same element does not obtain, say Canterbury. Now the population of Westland is 15,357 and its Custom's contribution is £94,276 13s sd, while the population of Canterbury is 46,801, and its contribution only £92,349 19s Id—the expense of collection being nearly the same in both. Thus a greater revenue may accrue from a small population consuming a large proportion of high duty-paying articles, than from a larger, whose habits and circumstances lead them to consume a less proportion of them. We need scarcely say that the items in our tariff which contribute most, and most easily, to the revenue, are spirits, wine, ale, and tobacco ; nor will any one dispute that it is to the greater relative consumption of these by the Victoria —resembling Westland, that its contribution to the revenue stands so high. From the returns in the Appendix No. 2 to the Journal of the House of Representatives, 1870, we find that the gross total of the Customs revenue for the year 1869. was £823,506 13s 3d; and of this, spirits yielded £333,479 6s lid ; wine, £36,987 3s Id; ale, £17,073 13s Id; and, tobacco, £88,488 5s 6d—these four articles yielding together £476,028 Ss 7d, or about 58 per cent. It may be well, by the way, for many who are ruinin" themselves by indulgence in these luxuries, and who are often the loudest grumblers about taxes, to note how much of the burden of taxation is self-imposed. But, to return to our comparison, not

only then is Victoria more favorably situated geographically, having practically only one port to our twenty-eight; having a population three times larger, and of these a greater proportion of consumers of high duty-paying articles ; but the cost of living for officers engaged in the collection of her customs revenue is considerably less than in New Zealand. Taking all these considerations into account, we need not be surprised if the amount paid for salaries in New Zealand is greater than that paid in Victoria; but what do we find? The Victoria Estimates for 1870 are before us, and we see that in Victoria the salaries of the Customs classified officers, for 1870, amounted to £42,887; and unclassified officers, £4,000 ; and, if we include the Distilleries Department, £3,000 more, making a total of about £50,000 ; while the total amount of salaries to Customs' officials in New Zealand, including extra tide-waiters, and the distilleries staff, is only £34,152 for the same year! But the best test that can be applied for the purpose of comparing the expenditure on our Customs department with that of Victoria, is that employed by Mr Stafford in the House last session. He remarked (See Hansard VII, 353): " With regard to the whole Customs expenditure, it was wonderfully cheap. They had, he believed, thirty-four or thirty-five ports, and they collected their Customs for one per cent, less than Victoria, with only three ports, and where the main business was done at one port! The service was efficient, and was continuing to improve from day to clay." What, then, it may be asked, does it cost per cent, to collect our Customs revenue ? In 1866, it cost 4| per cent., including the gold duty, and exclusive of the gold duty, per cent. In 1870, the expense was reduced to 4 percent., and exclusive of gold duty, pilotage, &c, (that is to say, in collecting the Customs duties alone,) 4| per cent. It may, perhaps, be not generally known that large reductions have been made in the Customs staff since the department was placed under the control and inspection of a permanent head. A reference to a return laid before the General Assembly in 1867, and printed in the Appendix to the Journals, shows that, for the year ending 30th June, 1867, the services of no fewer than 42 officers were dispensed with; and a similar return the following year shows that a further reduction was made —22 officers being then dispensed with No returns appear in the Appendices for 1869 and 1870, but we understand that considerable reductions have also been made during these years. The Victorian estimates show that the salaries there paid are considerably higher than our Customs officers receive ; and the same is the case, we believe, with regard to New South Wales, One or two illustrations from the Victorian estimates may be interesting : —Collector of Customs (only one required, by the way), £900; chief clerk, £6OO ; clerk and receiver, £6OO ; warehouse keepers, three, at £485 ; clerks—one at £485, two at £448 6s Bd, seven at £350, one at £3OO, one at £2OO, &c. Then, to take out-door officials, we have—two landing surveyors at £600; one assistant ditto, £583 6s 8d ; nine landing waiters at £485, one at £466 13s 4d, four at £350. Or, to make the comparison still closer : while the lowest paid landing waiter in Victoria has a salary of £359, and an assistant clerk allowed him, the Ugliest paid landing waiter, who does the same duty (with no assistance), in New Zealand receives only £200!

Thus it will be seen that our Customs Department, heavily handicapped as it is, from the remoteness and number of our ports, outstrips in the race _ of economy and efficiency its Victorian rival; and that " the knife" has been so applied already that any further reduction seems to us impossible, if the same zeal and efficiency displayed by its officers in the past are to bo continued. The only change that we can see desirable is to make their salaries a colo nial instead of a provincial charge, and so prevent deserving officers, who, from their very experience, may be sent to new ports, in comparatively poor provinces, to use a Hibernianism," ascending downwards." The cost of collecting was a proper provincial charge so long as the Customs receipts were regarded as provincial revenue ; but now that the

provinces are paid according to their population, ancL not to their receipts, there seems., to us no reason for continuing a which, it is easy to see, must be ;i( j U c i^ e .3ve of many difficulties and unpleasant anomalies in the working of the department. But whatever may be done in the new Parliament in this direction, we trust that no further reductions will be rashly made either in the numbers or salaries of a class of Civil servants, many of whom, we take leave to think, are already overworked and underpaid. The most cheese-paring legislator, at all events, will find no pretext for employing " the knife," from the published statistics either of Great Britain or any of her colonies.