THE BUDGET DEBATE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5457, 23 September 1878, Page 3

THE BUDGET DEBATE.

• (From the Australasian, September 14.) Hr. Berry’s forte is not finance. When he undertook the management of the public ac-. counts in a former Administration, the newspaper which now burns incense underneath his nostrils, and which then charactered him as “ traitorous, inexperienced, and untrustworthy,” remarked, '* With respect to Mr. Berry, his nomination to tho office of Treasurer appears somewhat like a passage drawn from a Christmas pantomime.” Wo should be just ns disinclined to speak of him in such offensive terms as the above, because we happen to be opposed to him just now, as we should be unlikely to become his sycophantic eulogists if wo should find him hereafter renouncing the r6le of the declamatory demagogue, and aspiring to play the part of a patriotic politician. But,* in any case, our opinion of his weakness as a financier would remain unchanged. Tho defects of his policy, tho errors of his statement, and the fallacy of his expectations, have been so clearly and vigorously exposed by Mr. Service, Sir John O’Sbanassy, Mr. Francis, and Mr. Lycll, that it is only necessary to touch upon some of the more salient points of tho Opposition speeches in the Budget debate, in order to show how incompetent the Treasurer is to deal with the administration of the public revenue and expenditure. As a stump speaker he has few superiors, and when he is declaiming against tho iniquities of wealth, and extolling the unrivalled intelligence of tho people—“ tho people” meaning that section of the community which is in political accord with himself—he is quite at home. Ho has repeated these sonorous platitudes so often that ho has ended by accepting them as truths; and the windy clap-trap of the platform has been gradually transformed into a creed, which is believed in all the more irapVcitly because it is irrational and extravagant. But financial questions cannot be disposed of in this fashion; and no amount of rhetoric can affect the figures of a balance-sheet, or change a loss into a profit, or a deficit into a surplus. Unfortunately, ns was pointed out by Mr. Francis, the operations of the year ending the 30th June last show a deficiency of £456,429, whiletho Estimates for the current year Involve an increase of £277,-449. Thus we are burning the candle at both ends, and we are going to raise a loan of £5,000.000, In order, as George Hudson, tho railway king, used to say, “to make things pleasant.” Atthe same time, weare proposing to effect such a revolutionary change ; in our polifcicalinsfcitutions as would, if adopted, occasion a general stampede from the colony of persons possessing means, and lead to a very serious falling off in the public revenue. 8 Meanwhile the Administration,* which disoaganised the public’ service upon tho obviously insincere plea of retrenchment, proposed an increased expenditure in eight of the departments, and a decrease in three only. To quote from Mr. Servicers speech:—“The increases were Chief Secretary’s' offices, £10,533 ; Department of Public Instruction, £50,311 ; Attorney - General's Department, £726 ; Public Works, £137,521 ; Customs, £139 ; Postal and Telegraph Department, £37,646 ; Railways, £57,685 ; and Mines, £26,445. The decreases were as follows : Minister of Justice, £14,593 ; Treasurer, £7616 ; Lands, £10,473; and special appropriations, £10,796. The total of the increases was £321,000, and of the decreases £43,470aud the net result was about £277,000 of an excess.

These figures will serve to show how hypocritical was the pretext put forward in justification or extenuation of tho shameful act of Black Wednesday, which we are glad to see was sharply animadverted upon in the course of the debate, when the inconsistencies hnd contradictions of Mr. Berry’s utterances on this subject were brought out in boldrelief.' At Geelong, on the 21st of. January, he said: —-“We began at the head—at the top—aud worked' downwards, and bear in mind that, if wehave struck otO' political foes, it is because in too many instances the heads of the Civil Service have been a powerful medium whereby the Council have frustrated the wishes of the people.” At Wdliamstown, on tho 11th of March, a different sang was sung. “Driven by the fierce necessity of their position,” said Mr. Berry, “they had done many things, which, in calmer blood, under ordinary circumstances, they would have hesitated to do. Amongst such things was the removal of a large number of civil servants, and of many heads of departments.” At Koroit, on the 28th of May, there was another change of tune. “Tho Government, in dismissing these ‘civil servants, had determined to show the Legislative Council that they had to deal with men, not children. It was blow for blow, and tho consequences fell upon those whom the Council would dearly have liked to have saved.” But in the Legislative Assembly, on Wednesday last, tho Treasurer said he had to complain of the hon. member for Belfast having,** attributed motives to the Government in the dismissal of tbe civil servants. - The Government had acted under a sense of .public responsibility. The statement that individual members of the Civil Service were dismissed for political reasons was absolutely false, but he was prepared to maintain what be had previously said, that tbe upper ranks in the Civil Service generally did aid and abet the Legislative Council.”

It is unnecessary to add a word of comment to the foregoing. Mr. Berry answers himself. He has two voices, like “ the moat delicate monster" spoken of by Stephano in the “ Tempest." But this quality is observable in other particulars. Hr. Berry’s “forward voice" imposes an export duty on wattle bark and red gam, and an import duty on stock; and bis “backward voice" acknowledges all three,to have been great mistakes. His “forward voice" announced the remission of certain imposts in 1577, and his “backward voice" confesses in 1878 that ho blundered in so doing. His “forward voice" preached economy and retrenchment; but his “ backward voice" proclaims his financial policy to be one of extravagance and profusion, necessitating the negotiation of aft immediate loan, and foreshadowing confiscatory taxation upon property in the future, if the Dower House can only obtain the uncontrolled power of the purse, ’ ' In short, no unprejudiced person can read Hr, Berry’s .financial statement and the debates which have arisen upon it, without feeling that the management of our public revenue and expenditure is vested in altogether incompetent hands. “He wanted a Minister of Finance," it was once said ,of Louis XV., “ and he chose a dancing master," But it ia painfully evident that mistakes like these are just as liable to be made by absolute democracies as by absolute monarchies; and tho Ministerial journal of 1878 was probably right, and spoke from a more intimate knowledge than wo possess, when it ridiculed his assumption of that office in 1870, and emphatically declared him to be “inexperienced and untrustworthy.”