OPPOSITION CRITICISM.

Patea Mail, Volume VI, Issue 526, 29 May 1880, Page 3

OPPOSITION CRITICISM.

The Premier’s speech appeals to the Colony on the ground of economy. The Government have spent loss than the votes, therefore they have fulfilled their promises of retrenchment. The claims put forward is founded on the supposed ignorance of his audience. It was established last session that the estimates of expenditure had never been revised by the Government, and that largo sums amounting in all to about a quarter of a million could not be spent within the year. Now, there has not been a Financirl Statement for ten years but has shown exactly the same kind of “ savings” as the Premier cunningly exhibited the other evening at a small village in Canterbury. Pie has anticipated the Financial Statement, and the object is clear. The favorable judgment of the country is to bo secured before all the facts can be debated and criticised. The late Government published quarterly in the Gazette tables showing the expenditure in every class, and so enabling any one who took the trouble to read, to judge as to the progress of the payments. The practice was discontinued by Major Atkinson, who returned to mystery and juggle. Mr Hall’s plan of proving that his Ministry have been economical, will not find any imitator in the future. The reduction in the mileage expenses of the railways is what every one anticipated as a resultant of the diminished traffic and income. It was an absolute necessity, apparent to the mind of every traffic manager in the Colony, whatever Ministry had been in office. The story about the Armed Constabulary making roads “to open up 100,000 acres of the finest splendid wheat-growing land,” is simply fiction.—Wanganui Herald.