The Telephone. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, MONDAY, JUNE 30. WHOSE BLAME ?

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 170, 30 June 1884, Page 2

The Telephone. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, MONDAY, JUNE 30. WHOSE BLAME ?

Never at any period in the history of New Zealand has there been among its people such an absence of unity of feeling as the time present. There is absolutely no public opinion which takes any defined form, shape, or dimensions. We have been passing through bad times. We are still financially and commercially perilously insecure. And all, or much of this, is laid to the fault of the Government under which we have been living. There has been the bursting up of large firms with, it is to be feared, many more to follow. One firm, which had been importers of general merchandise, has tumbled in ruins, owing close upon fifty thousand pounds. Our Saturday wires told us another large house, dealing in iron, had gone for ninety thousand. Failures for less amounts, but still amounts very large for comparatively small centres, have been many and serious. But how could any Government have prevented so much of disaster which has gone before and is likely to follow ? If one merchant imports goods in excess of his capital or the requirements of his customers; if another enters upon larger and hazardous contracts which has brought down commercial ruin upon him; if scores upon scores of men enter upon trades without any means to carry them on or knowledge to conduct them, can any Government living prevent such a state of things? Let the question be answered.

Again if men have bought large areas of land with an impression that they are to get a shilling per pound for the wool grown on it, and it only realises eight-pence or nine-pence, are the Government to be blamed for this ? Should Major Atkinson, or some other Minister, have gone to these buyers and said, gentlemen, you are entering upon very risky speculations, You are giving by far and away much more than you ought to give. Much more than you can afford to give. Surely such a thing is not, and never can be, the function pertaining to any Government. And it is the same with our cereals. Men have leased, and bought, and worked the soil under the same delusive impression—an impression that wheat, oats and barley would realise by a shilling or one-and-sixpence a bushel more than has found to be the case. Is Government to be blamed for this.

There is a semi-private publication issued to subscriber, known as “ The Mercantile Gazette and Trade Circular.” Open its pages and run through its records for the last twelve months. And its all the same from page first to page last. Men’s land and sheep, and cattle and chattels (those of Poverty Bay as much as any) are mortgaged up to the neck, at heavy rates of interest, crushing the borrowers down to the dust. Foreign capitalists through the banks and large monetary agencies are reaping the benefit of colonial over-trading and over-buying beyond its means. But how is the Government to prevent these things? We may tax absentees; we may, if insane enough, lay an embargo upon imported capital, but will that make men who have been thoughtless and improvident any better ? It is not impossible but that our financial position may yet culminate in the bursting up of some bank or other, together with many other institutions and companies and undertakings which it has been long assisting to bolster up by all the schemes of wily financiers. But how is any government to prevent this?

Of the future of New Zealand there is nothing to fear. Its soil, climate, natural products, and vast resources are too good and too many to permit

of permanent injury to its people. But the people must look to themselves, trust to themselves, think and act for themselves, and ignore any such feeling as supposing that any government Liberal or Conservative, middle party, or coalition or amalgamated party can help them out of their difficulties. The experiences of the past have told us this, and if these experiences are unheeded let us not blame the Government we live under, Coming back, then, to public opinion, where is it to be found in our midst. What we mean, is an opinion having consistency and formed on an understandable basis. We hear the cry of the “ Liberal party” and Sir George, and of the “ Conservative party” and the present Ministry. But such a cry has not even an understratum of meaning to it. The good old fashioned cry of “ Measures, not men” appears to have died out. An elector is now a Vogelite, or a Greyite, or for Atkinson, or some other man who for the time being looms large above the political horizon, We trust all to our particular favorite without requiring to know whether he is suitable or unsuitable for our local wants and requirements.

There is a writer in an Auckland paper who treats the subject of public opinion a good deal out of the usual course of journalistic writing. On all sides the writer contends that thoughtless emotion is taking the place of argument and logic, for argument is now felt to be of no effect, and logic is simply wasted —a bewildering disc—resulting from numberless causes, producing numberless effects. Look around and in one hour the multitude will be found supporting by their presence and applause the doings of a Salvation Anny, and will placidly admit they have no sympathy with, neither do they believe in, the movement. On another they will be found bolstering up Good Templarism, and other similar combinations, not from conviction of their utility and benefit, but because it is a craze of the day—or it suits to show a masked front; it seems to be fashionable to crowd around atheistic lecturers, whether clever or commonplace ; and hunger with a famishing hunger for belief in immortality ; the propagation of children and demanding of the State free education for them, is a settled conviction as one of the rights of the people, not limited to being of an elementary character neither, and complain of heavy taxation. They hooray a plausible speaker to the seventh heaven, although the unborn millions’ interest is the topic they cheer, and will candidly and cheerily inform any questioner that it is humbug delightfully dished up—and they simply hooray the dishing up.

The present craze, until some other usurps its place, is the nationalization of the land. Those who advocate it so warmly, don’t stop to consider the correctness of the standing benignant promise “ That every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree;” nor the political and divine economy in connection therewith ; nor the seeming almost instinct for ownership of the soil—to own some spot of land, and be able to say, “ This is mine,” as one of the sweetest personal feelings of humanity ; neither pausing to ask themselves the question what is the main inducement to the quarter of a million of souls emigrating from Europe to the Colonies, which they do for the very reason they can become owners of land here which they never could if they stayed where they did. Again, there is an enormous hankering after petty show and parade. Every village to be a Borough, every Borough to have its Mayor. Town districts, district boards —and nobody will work without the honor of publicity—plus the insensate noisy squabble. But it is only a question of a little time before matters will have settled down, and a fresh start made. Just as after a heavy storm at sea has washed away a ships bulwarks, carried over her sides the boats, hencoops and cook’s caboose, still no material damage has been done, for the hull is sound, and the ship, with a little delay, will yet reach her port of destination. Such is our New Zealand.