PATEA MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. TUESDAY, JUNE 8, 1880. “RAISING THE WIND.

Patea Mail, Volume VI, Issue 530, 8 June 1880, Page 2

PATEA MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. TUESDAY, JUNE 8, 1880. “ RAISING THE WIND.

Major Atkinson’s financial statement is to be submitted to the House to-day, and as the main questions for this session relate to and depend upon the financial position of the colony, his proposals for “ raising the wind” area waited with unusual curiosity. A deficit of nearly a million has to be provided for. The Premier hints that it will be done by severe retrenchment. This cuttingdown is easier to promise than to execute. Our politicians have not been accustomed to face adversity in colonial financing, and “ retrenchment” conveys to them only one idea, that of cutting down the annual grants for local public works. Can this be done all round ? Voters would be ready to cry down the vote for other districts than their own ; but when members reach Wellington they find it is necessary to form cliques for mutual support in the voting of their several subsidies, and so the tendency is to colleague together for squeezing the largest lump sum out of the Government. Major Atkinson may shake his empty bag in their faces. They only laugh, and say it is the Treasurers business to find the money whch Parliament votes for public works. A Treasurer must be a man of expedients, or he will not do for the New Zealand Parliament, Members go up from all parts of the colony under strong local pressure to make demands for local grants. They must have the money, or some of it; and they have a way of compelling the Government by banding together for mutual support. The money will have to be “ raised.” If Major Atkinson cannot do it, he is to be pitied. He is a financier in a fix. The colony has convertible securities: what is he doing with them ? Are we to suppose that a Treasurer in difficulties will deliberately give away the Waimate Plains to a number of Maoris whoso claim had been previously extinguished ? If so, he must be held accountable for creating an unnecessary, impolitic, and absurd deficit, by giving away land which would sell to-morrow for an amount equal to the whole deficit.