OUR BORROWING POLICY.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1133, 2 January 1884, Page 3

OUR BORROWING POLICY.

The other day, says the Press , wo heard it shrewdly asked at a meeting of the unemployed* “ What good has tbe last loan done the-working men ?” The speaker was complaining, we fancy, not so much of the amount of the loan, or the mischievousness of the loan policy, as of the borrowing , of the three millions being spread over three years instead of one. What ho meant to say was, “ What is the good of a million.a year to the working men? If you are going to borrow at all, borrow three millions or five millions in a lump, and spend it in a lump too, and then wo may all get a chance of making something out of it.” But for all that his question was a startling one. A million a year is a tremendous sum for this little country to add to its already too largo indebtedness. It is a tremendous sum for half a million of people to spend on public works. It is a tremendous sum of foreign capital to be introduced and circulated among so few. Yet it does nobody any good. It adds £50,000 a year to tbe permanent taxation ; and after all the unemployed are clamouring for bread, and talking about using dynamite ! They say that they are taxed to pay the interest on this borrowed money, and that, therefore, they have a right to a share of it. The rest of the public say the same thing in other words. They say it is high time for an end to be put to a policy which does nobody any good ; but which fills our streets with and malcontents, and plunges community up to the neck in 4 ■ _