Rangitikei Advocate. WEDNESDAY, JULY 31. 1907. SECOND EDITION. EDITORIAL NOTES

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8877, 31 July 1907, Page 2

Rangitikei Advocate. WEDNESDAY, JULY 31. 1907. SECOND EDITION. EDITORIAL NOTES

UNDER the heading of “A Dominion in Pawn’ 5 Christchurch Truth sharply criticises the borrowing policy of the Ministry. In the course of its article it says:—“The squander policy has been going on merrily now for some 13 years, and there is not the slightest attempt during a period of extraordinary prosperity to become self-reliant, and to shape a course leading away from instead of to the Bankruptcy Court. During the past six years the public debt has gone up by leaps and bounds, at an average of some two millions a year, and the public seems content to accept the assurance of the Government that the money is being spent on reproductive i works, which will prevent the added indebtedness becoming a

charge on the taxpayers. Time after time the fallacy of this has been exposed, and it has been shown that a burden of interest is being heaped up, regardless of the future. We are asked to consider what a splendid asset the country has in its railways, but the apologists [for the frenzied finance of the Continuous Ministry do not dwell on the fact that the interest charges since 1895 would have built all the railways in New Zealand and completed the Midland and Main Trunk lines into the bargain. Nor do members of Parliament themselves show any particular appreciation of the position, for during the Financial debate, when, if at no other time, we have a right to expect them to go into the financial situation, the majority ignored the question altogether, and it was left to several Opposition members and Mr F. M. B. Fisher, to point out the dangers ahead. Mr Fisher showed how the Australian States, which are all heavily in debt, were taking advantage of their present prosperity to put their finances on a sounder footing, and that New Zealand alone was going on borrowing as freely as ever. The Premier interjected with a suggestion that in quoting debt statistics some cognisance should be taken of the assets, but if a comparison is made of the public and private wealth of Australian States as compared with New Zealand, we think it will be found that Australia is quite as well able to pay its debts as Now Zealand. The money-lender is not particularly interested as to whether’we spend our loans on railways or fireworks, or keeping selfseeking politicians in office; he is .merely interested in our solvency, and as long as he considers the colony can offer the security, ho will continue to lend. But is tiro dominion going to emulate the example of Venezuela or any other tin dollar South American Republic, and doom itself to perpetual pawn, or is it going to pull up and make an honest effort to pay its way? It is usually a man’s pride to clear his estate and have it unencumbered for his family, and many an early settler has spent his life in breaking in new laud, improving it in every possible way, and clearing it of the mortgage his preliminary want of capital made necessary, till when the time came to hand it over to his sons it is a model, self-supporting estate. We would have a very mean opinion of a man who decided that because he had to leave the • property to his descendants they should pay the interest on the money he borrowed to clear and fence it in, while he squandered his income in riotous living. And if the descendants overlooked through the old accounts and found that the original owner had gone to the money-lender every time money was wanted to pay the gas bill, or to buy a new rake, or a cartridge, while he pretended to have a largce surplus, their contempt and disgust would know no bounds. Yet that is precisely the way wo are treating posterity. We are making no effort to clear the estate; on the contrary, under the pretence of ‘reproductive works’ we go on mortgaging it up to the neck by charging hundreds of thousands of pounds of ordinary expenditure every year, to borrowed money, which any private concern would pay for out of its revenue. But the cilmax is surely reached when the Government announces a reduction in the public debt of £150,000 and a million loan in the same breath!’’