MAJOR ATKINSON’S REPLY to Mr Hutchison.

Patea Mail, 7 December 1881, Page 3

MAJOR ATKINSON’S REPLY to Mr Hutchison.

We are requested to publish the following letter:— After reading the speeches made by Mr Hutchison at Patea, as reported in the Patea County Mail on 30th Nov. and 2nd December, and bis speech made at Opunaki, as reported in the Hawera Star of 30tb Nov., I had to consider how, with the least inconvenience to the electors, I could place before them my reply to Mr Hutchison’s statements. I came to the conclusion, after consultation with my friends, that the electors would rather prefer a printed reply than attend several more meetings. May I therefore ask you to print the following: remarks for the information of the public. Mr Hutchison in his first series of speeches to the electors made many and grave charges against me as the representative of the district. These charges were vague and general, and therefore impossible to answer satisfactorily until first formulated. They were however put with considerable skill to catch strangers and the unwary, and showed a practised hand not altogether unsuccessful in dealing with cases of a somewhat desperate character. My first business was therefore to formulate the charges made against me by m 3' opponent. This I did as follows : (Ist) That I had supsported during last session the New Plymouth Harbor scheme to the injury of the Egmont District ; (2nd) That I had generally neglected the district, especially in regard to obtaining a fair share of Public Work’s expenditure ; (3rd) That I had been guilty of treachery to Mr Bryce, and had supported a bad Native policy, I propose to make my remarks under those three heads, so that the}' can be compared with those made by Mr Hutchison in the speeches to which I have referred. Mr Hutchison accepts numbers 1 and 2 as formulating what he charged me with in respect to the harbor at New Plymouth and public works in the district, and undertakes to prove them true. He, however, objects to number 3, sa}'ing he never charged me with treachery to Mr Bryce, but only* with treachery to a policy represented by Mr Bryce, a very nice distinction, and one which I venture to think was appreciated by only' a very select few of Mr Hutchison’s supporters. I overlooked the distinction myself, and so did Mr Bryce, and so has everyone to whom I have spoken on the subject. But the point raised is really of no importance to the question at issue, the exception Mr Hutchison would make is in truth a distinction without a difference so far as it has any practical bearing upon 1113' candidature. Mr Hutchison has been so unfortunate in the general position which he lias taken up that I am quite willing to amend number 3 as he wishes, so that the issues between us rna}' be clearly before the electors. First, then, we have to consider number 1, the N.P. harbor question. The facts of the case are shortly these, which I give as the best answer to Mr Hutchison’s statements. In 1874, Parliament authorised the Provincial Government of Taranaki to set aside one quarter of the land fund for the purpose of building a harbor at New Plymouth. In 1875 the Provincial Government exercised this authority by ordinance, and set apart one quarter of its land fund as an endowment for the barber. In 1876, when the Provinces were abolished, this endowment was preserved for the use of the Harbor Board by T a special clause in the Financial Arrangements Act of that year. In 1877 a bill was brought into Parliament which reduced the rating power of the Board from two shillings in the £ to one shilling, and its borrowing powers from £350,000 to £200,000. While this bill was before Parliament petitions were presented against the continuance of the harbor scheme, and the objectors were heard before Committees of both houses, but after full enquiry the bill became law. In 1878, when Sir G, Grey generalised the land fund, the grant to the Harbor Board was again confirmed by a special clause in the Financial Arrangements Act of that year. Clauses have also from time to time been inserted in other Acts for the same purpose. It should here be noted that the share of the land fund granted to the Board can only be used for the purpose of paying sinking fund and interest. The Board in 1879 borrowed £200,000 at 6 per cent., being the total amount it has authority to borrow. No further charge can therefore be put upon the rate-payers without fresh legislation. Large and legitimate interests had grown up under these repeated sanctions given by Parliament to the construction of a harbor, and the building of the mole was fairly in hand when Mr Wright’s committee stepped in and recommended the stoppage of the works and the confiscation of the endowments. In speaking against the adoption of this recommendation, which was most unjust to many deserving settlers and fraught with great danger to every local body throughout the colony, I convinced the House that the figures and calculations of the Committee were quite unreliable, and if their figures were true that the colony' would suffer lossb}’ taking over the assets and liabilities of the Board —stating at the same time that in my opinion no rate would ever be required,

I may here point out a fact which was overlooked by the Committee, and is also lost sight of by Mr Hutchison : that had the works been stopped the whole of the money in the hands of the Board, and the whole of the Board’s share of the land fund accruing for the next 8 or 10 years to the amount named by tlie Committee, and £17,000 additional, would have been required to pay off the loss ; so that the Board’s land fund could not have been used for the benefit of the district in the way of local works as suggested by Mr Hutchison. Now fully one-half of ray constituents who are liable to be rated passed resolutions urging me to do my best to have the harbor works gone on with, and a majority of the other half, as I understood them, did not wish to interfere with the endowments or stop the works if they could be assured against having to pay a rate. I went very carefully into the question of the probability of a rate being required, and satisfied myself that no rate would be struck for at least 24 years from the present time. These are the grounds upon which my opinion is formed . If wo accept the Committee’s figures (which are certainly not an over-estimate) of the value of the land which will be sold in fen years from now, wc find that no rate will be required for eight years. I estimated the time at nine years. Mr Hutchison is willing to allow ten years. So I suppose I may assume that we are safe from being rated for the next nine years. Now, if at the end of ten years only sufficient land has been sold to provide the interest and sinking fund required for that time—and if more is sold so much the better for the Board—there will remain in the bands of the Government, for sale, not less than 450.000 acres of bush land. But where is this land ? some people are asking. I reply, anyone can see for himself at Mr James Davidson’s store, Hawera, where I have left a map (as I stated upon the day of nomination I would do) which shows at a glance the land still in the hands of the Government. I estimate that at the end of 10 years from now, the net revenue of the Board from dues and rent of town reserves will be not less than £6,000 a year. I also estimate that the 450.000 acres of land will certainly produce a gross land revenue of £32,000 a year for the next 15 years, beginning in the year 1891, for it is only necessary for the sale of this 450,000 acres to begin at that remote date. If, then, these estimates are reasonable (and who can doubt it?) no rate can be required for 24 years from the present time. Against this case Mr Hutchison advances nothing but his own unsupported opinion. Let us now consider the usefulness of the work which can be constructed for the money in the hands of the Board. The estimate, which Mr Hutchison says was the most favorable one I could produce was, as be should have known, prepared by Mr Blackett in his official capacity as Marine Engineer of the colony, for and and at the request of Mr Wright’s Committee and not for me. My only connection with it was that I received a copy of it as Minister of Marine, and as Mr Wright did not put his copy' on the table of the House, I did. From this estimate of Mr Blackett’s it appears that the work can be carried out with the money in hand, to a point which will accommodate vessels of the ‘ Hawea ’ class. This will certainly be a great boon to a large number of my constituents and to some thousands of other settlers in Taranaki. The truth is that no sufficient cause lias been shown for confiscating the endowments and stopping the works, and no practical advantage would accrue to any settler for so doing. I feel sure that had I supported the recommendations of the Committee, thereby throwing some 60 or 80 men out of employment, to the certain ruin of many of them, and not only ruin to them but also to some hundreds of industrious settlers who have been (upon the faith of Acts of Parliament) for years reckoning upon the completion of this work—l say had I done this, for the sake of relieving some of m 3' constituents of a possible rate of (say threepence in the pound) in 24 years from now, and immediately from the liability of being so rated 24 years hence, I should have deserved and received the strongest condemns! ion from the very men whom I sought to relieve of what they will never feel at such a terrible cost to so many of their fellow settlors. There is one other point and I have done with the harbor. Mr Hutchison say's that if a rate is required it will tie a shilling one. The capital value of the lands within the rating district in 24 years will certainly in 103' opinion be much more than £4,000,000. I claim to have shown above that there is no foundation whatever for charge number one. I now come to the second charge. First with regard to roads and bridges, I made it perfectly clear at all my meetings that there had been expended on roads and bridges in Egmont £106,000, and in the rest of the Provincial district only £46,000 for the same purposes from the beginning of the Public Works scheme, and I pointed out that the average population of Taranaki, tiiat is the rest of the Provincial district outside Egmont, was double that of Egmont, and that Taranaki has had two members while Egmont has had only one. Mr Hutchison seeing the hopelessness of his case, has tried to throw dust in the e3 T cs of the electors by comparing the expenditure upon roads and bridges in Egmont with the total expenditure, as shown by a parliamentary return, in the Provincial district of Taranaki. I showed the absurdity of bis figures in a letter to the Patea Mail, winch Mr Hutchison attempted to answer but failed, as any one who reads the letters must see. But that the electors may see how very careless *

and inaccurate Mr Hutchison is in his statements, I will give one instance. Mr Hutchison, in his letter replying to mine, says the Parliamentaiy return gives the total expenditure upon roads and bridges in the district as £134,000, and then he triumphantly asks how can £106,000 and £46,000 come out of £134,000, and immediately draws the conclusion that 1113" figures must be wrong. Now had Mr Hutchison used only ordinary care, which be was bound out of respect to you to do, he could not have made so gross a blunder. The Parliamentaiy return is dated 31st March, 1881. I was speaking of the expenditure to 30th June, 1881, both of which facts Mr Hutchison did or should have known before attempting to speak to yon upon the subject. The vote for £50,000 for roads and bridges in the unsettled districts of Taranaki and Patea was, as Mr Hutchison must know, no an ordinary road vote taken for a definite work, but was a lump sum placed at the discretion of the Native Minister to be spent in making roads to settle the Native difficult}'. The vote has been spent_ as intended and as rapidly as was possible, contracts for a large part of the time being out of the question owing to the attitude of the Natives. The vote was never intended by Parliament, or considered by any one, as a vote which was necessarily to be spent within the 3'ear. The works for which the vote was taken have been pushed on as rapidly as possible, and in no sense can any part of this vote be described as having lapsed to the detriment of the district. Nor has any unnecessary delay occurred in its expenditure. I now come to railways, and apparently here is Mr Hutchison’s stronghold. He has fairly caught me tripping at last, and he does not mean to let me recover myself again if he can help it. This is quite fair. Some points in the road expenditure might, with skill of a certain kind, be worked against me, but they are doubtful. Here, however, all is clear, and my opponent with a flourish of trumpets has determined to pin me to my statement. Well, so let it be. I must here ask you to bear in mind that Mr Hutchison is a lawyer, used to sifting evidence, and ever read}' to pick out and take advantage of the weak points in his enemy’s line of defence* I may, therefore, fair!}' assume that he has selected for his attack my weakest point, and that if he fails there, his failure is complete. The case is this : I stated that £82,000 had been voted for the Waitara and Patea railway in 1880-1 ; that of this vote there had been expended £71,000, and that there was an outstanding liability of £21,000 when the vote expired. Mr Hutchison says', on the contrary, that £71,000 have not been expended out of the £82,000, and that £56,753 onlv have been spent ; and he refers to the Estimates as his authority. Of course in speaking, I used round numbers. Now let us be exact. But first let me point out that it would have been perhaps unfair to expect much knowledge of the public accounts from Mr Hutchison. His line of life has led him in a different direction, and had he not shown such a cheerful confidence in his own knowledge, I should have been disposed to treat him more gently than I shall do now. You have, however, a right to expect that, ns a lawyer, he should know at any rate the statute law upon any subject upon which he was going to enlighten the Egmont electors ; but Mr Hutchison appears contentedly ignorant of the Acts amending the Public Revenues Act, 1878. Let me, in passing, commend these Acts and the original Act to his attention before be again ventures to sa} T positively that an expenditure which I state has been made, baa not been so made. Now for the facts. We are both agreed that £82,000 was voted ; also that £56,753 12s lid appears as expended at page 6 of the Estimates for 1881-2 ; but why did not Mr Hutchison, before assuming this amount to be the total expenditure out of the vote, take the trouble to look at the date at the bead of the column in which that sum appears. If he had done so he would have seen that the £56,753 12s lid was expenditure to 30th March' only, and had he been acquainted with the Revenue Acts, as he ought to have been, before venturing to address } T ou upon such a subject, he would have known that the vote of £82,000 did not expire til! 30th June. He would then, instead of jumping to the conclusion that the £56,753 12s lid was the total expenditure, have looked in the next column but one, and would there have seen a sum of £34,697 3s 4d entered ns expenditure between 31st March and 30th June, 1881, and liability on the latter date. Of this £34,697 3s 4d, £15,631 8s 9d is expenditure between 31sfc March and 30th June, and £19,065 14s 7d liabilities on that date. My statement, speaking in round numbers, was that of the £82,000 voted, £71,000 had been expended, and that there were outstanding liabilities of £21,000, a total as against the vote of £92,000. Mr Hutchison says, speaking after carefully looking the matter up with the view of defeating mo on my own challenge, that the expenditure was only £56,753 12s lid. The Estimates to which Mr Hutchison refers as his authority, show a total of expenditure and liabilities of L 91,450 16s 3d, of which 1.72,385 Is 8d was expenditure and L 19,065 ]4s 7d liabilities. This then is the result of the examination of the test case which was selected by Mr Hutchison to prove my inaccurac}' and unreliability. Was there ever a more complete case of an engineer being “ hoist with his own petard ?” But it is more than this ; it shows how utterly reckless Mr Hutchison must be in what he will say against a political opponent, for if he will dare to make such statements as this upon a subject upon which he can at once be brought to book, and which he might

fairly' have been supposed to have mastered, what would he not say upon other subjects which cami"t bo so easily tested, and I would ask the electors to bear in mind that this case was not selected in a hurry by Mr Hutchison. What he said was not on the spur of the moment, but it was all done deliberately and after full consideration. As the accuracy of the statements in my' speeches have not in any way been shaken by Mr Hutchison, and as his test case has completely broken down, I need say' no more under this head, except that the very' large expenditure which has taken place in Egmont is only' justifiable upon grounds of public policy. That this expenditure has been wise and profitable is, I think, self-evident, but no one can deny with truth, that it has not been generous tqo. I now come to the third charge—treachery to a native policy which I had promised the electors to support. Not a tittle of evidence has been advanced by' Mr Hutchison in support of his charge. I assert that the native policy of the Government from the beginning to the end has never faltered or been changed. Mr Bryce last year unfortunately differed from the Government as to the time at which certain action should be taken, but he has stated that if he had been in my' place he should probably not have resigned, and that had I been Native Minister I should probably have resigned as ho did. This will show at any rate what Mr Bryce’s opinion is as to my treachery to a native policy which I have steadily and consistently supported throughout. Mr Bryce’s opinion is, I venture to think, probably worth more upon this point than Mr Hutchison’s.

H. A. Atkinson