THE STATE OF OUR FINANCES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5791, 21 October 1879, Page 3

THE STATE OF OUR FINANCES.

The following comments trom the ota(j9 Daily Times, a journal which supported the Grey administration during its term of office, will be read with considerable interest: _ The disclosures made by Major Atkinson respecting the state of our colonial finances are indeed alarming. We have of late repeatedly alluded to the matter of finance, and have warned our readers that the situation was serious enough, and needed the most careful generalship to pull us through ; but we were scarcely prepared for the revelations made by Major Atkinson. We had estimated the deficiency for the year at £400,000. Major Atkinson, taking the late Government's own estimates of revenue, makes it £063,858 ; but reducing the estimate of revenue to what the present Treasurer regards as a safer figure, he makes the deficiency no less than £911,000 —a sum representing somewhere between a fourth and a fifth of the whole year’s revenue. Mr. Ballance takes exception to these figures, but even he admits the deficit will be between £500,000 and £600,000. But this is not all : the five-million loan, it appears, is half spent already—that is to say, the sum spent since SOth June last, together with contracts and engagements entered into, will absorb two millions during the present financial year ; and as £BOO,OOO was to be set aside to redeem the pledged guaranteed debentures, and a considerable sum for the purchase of native lands and for immigration, there will certainly not bo two millions to appropriate : and yet the West Coast people were promised their railway by the late Premier, and Auckland is clamoring for a large expenditure in that district, to say nothing of the claims of all the rest of the colony. How is it that we did not know this state of affairs before ? How is it that the Grey Government went to the country without a whisper as to the serious position into which our finances were drifting f It is absurd to talk of the action of the Opposition or of the Governor last session as preventing a proper statement of the colonial finance being made. Th© Grey Government were urged to make a statement on the subject before Parliament rose, and Sir George, in response to this demand, laid before the House the baldest of memorandums, which really told nothing as to the true condition of affairs. During the elections not a word of warning was uttered by the Government or their supporters, if we except Mr. Macandrew, who did certainly in general terms intimate the pressing necessity for retrenchment. But as far as any definite statement of ways and means is concerned, Major Atkinson’s is, as he has stated, the first wo have had for fifteen months, and it is so startling in its character as to cause all thinking men to stand aghast that we could have been brought so close to the brink of a precipice and yet not have known it. Is this “government by the people for the people 1” Is this true Liberalism 1 Supposing even that the Grey Government were not responsible for a large amount of extravagant expenditure and for making engagements they had no certain means of meeting, they are deeply responsible for keeping the people in the dark as to the real condition of affairs. But if Major Atkinson’s statement is to be relied on, so far from having retrenched by £IOO,OOO, as Sir George Grey said he could do, they have increased the expenditure under the head of Law, Customs, and other departments by £BO,OOO ; under the head of Native Department by £15,000 ; under “Contingencies” by £ll,OO0 —to say nothing of the reckless expenditure for the purchase of native lands, a description of outlay which, in the hands of a man like Mr, Sheehan, can be made to cover a multitude of sins. And all this in the face of the fact that deficiency bills had to be issued to the tune of £400,000, renders the late Government so grossly culpable that we shall not be surprised to see an entire revulsion of feeling against them, even among the more respectable members on their own aide of the House. We hear nothing of the steps which have been taken to float the loan, but, as Major Atkinson pointed out, we have made engagements to the tune of £2,000,000 without an absolute certainty that it would be floated at all. It is true that to bring public works to a standstill suddenly would have been disastrous to the working classes ; but had there been no dissolution we should at least hare saved several precious months and a large expenditure of money, at a time when every day and every item of expenditure was of consequence. We cannot but charge Sir George Grey in the first degree, and his colleagues in the second degree, with selfish ambition in preferring the interests of party to the interests of the colony, when true patriotism would have dictated an entirely different course. The only excuse to be made for Sir George Grey is that he is no financier, and that he personally did not really know the true state of the case. After Mr. Ballance left the Cabinet we believe he was “ all at sea,” and quite incapable of managing the department himself. But even he could not have been ignorant of the meaning of “ deficiency bills,” and we cannot acquit him of having deceived the country to suit his own purposes. We trust that the Hall Ministry will continue their labors, as they evidently are at present conveniently entrenched from attack behind the rules of the House.