Rangitikei Advocate. TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 1908 EDITORIAL NOTES.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9115, 7 April 1908, Page 4

Rangitikei Advocate. TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 1908 EDITORIAL NOTES.

IN his speech at Whangarei Mr Massey quoted the sixteen millions increase in seven years in the public indebtedness, the increase of £lO in the last 12 years in the net indebtedness per head, and the increase of 25 millions in the debt. He urged rigid economy until the debt per head was much less than now. In this connection an article winch recently appeared in the Sydney Bulletin is of interest. In the course of it our contemporary says:—“Some time ago this paper had a serious idea that it might be necessary, in a few years, to work up a second centennial celebration in New South Wales, and to .issue another special centennial stamp — this time with the inscription: “We Owe One Hundred Millions”; and to have illuminations, and flowers, and rockets, and free drinks, and free fights, and great mafficking in order to mark the fact that the country had reached the hundredth milestone on the road to ruin. But things have changed somewhat for the better in New South Wales since those wild, whirling Reid and McMillan and Owe’Sullivan days, and now it begins to look as if Maoriland would want that maffick and that centennial stamp before any other Australasian State. For in loan matters Maoriland to-day is Just Plain Mad. The ricketty isles owe more than any other State of Australasia save New South Wales (which has 50 per cent more population and thrice the area), and they are fast overhauling New South Wales. They owe more Jthan South Australia, Westralia and Tasmania put together; also much more than Victoria and Tasmania put together.” After pointing out that Australia has to some extent abandoned the borrowing policy the article continues: —“But in this respect Maoriland learns nothing. It is seventeen years behind the times, and it talks at second-hand the twaddle of Victoria’s profligate borrowers of the Gillies days, when great Boom whs just changing to great Burst. The average rate of borrowing has been multiplied by eleven since the days of Ballance, and all his wise maxims of honesty and self-reliance have been thrown to the winds. ... It is piling

up its liabilities faster than it ever did before, even in the worst of the old days. It has a smaller proportion of payable assets to show for its debt than any other State of Australasia, and it is less scrupulous than any other State—less scrupulous than even profligate and disreputable Westralia—about misapplying its new loans to utterly unprofitable works that should clearly be charged to revenue. In the loan boom of these later years it has lost its senses and its political conscience, and gone Just Plain Mad. Financially it has got into a second childhood. It talks again the old exploded baby platitudes about the necessity for bringing loan money into the country to develop its great natural resources —the platitudes of which every Australian State has become considerably ashamed, and of which Maoriland itself was ashamed 15 or 16 years ago, when it had gone to great wreck on its first loan burst, and was poor and sorry, and in toe mood to listen to John Ballance’s wisdom. Maoriland has an enormous opinion of itself nowadays. As a whole, it is firmly convinced that natural laws are suspended in its case, and, though everywhere else reckless borrowing and infuriated spending lead to disaster, yet they don’t lead that way in Maoriland, simply because it is Maoriland. It is® a pleasant theory, and almost every country has had it at one time or another. But while Victoria and Queensland and other States (have been content to go to the devil once through the loan madness, and then have started laboriously on the rocky back track, it seems that Maoriland is resolved to go to the same old devil twice. It wants to make sure that he is still there. The lesson ofgthe dreadful “eighties” is as completely lost as if ,it had never been. Financially, Maoriland is Plain Mad. More than that, it is Raving.”

THE loss of the torpedo destroyer Tiger with thirty-six of |her officers and crew owing to a collision with the cruiser Berwick during manoeuvres at night without lights is a regrettable incident and the sympathy of the Empire will go out to the families of the men who have lost their lives. At the same time we cannot help feeling a thrill of pride at the events surrounding the accident. The cruiser we are told was proceeding at high speed and the destroyer was doing 25 knots. To say that such speeds without lights on a wet and rather rough night are dangerous is a mere truism, but war means danger and the best peace

training is to reproduce as far as possible the conditions existing in time of • war. After the collision disoijjflme did all that could be done to save life, and the engineer, while stepping aside to avoid the bow of the cruiser as it crashed through the frail structure of the destroyer, fouud time to order the engine room staff to shut off steam and to escape. The men who perished have deserved as well of their country as if they had lost their lives in actual warfare.

THE platform of the Farmers’ Union has for one of its planks the principle that customs duties should be for revenue purposes only, in other words the Union refuses to support our system of protective tariffs. Yet the Colonial Executive in its report of the work'd one during the past year states ‘ ‘ in regard to the tariff there is a modicum of satisfaction in the retention of the flour duty. ” The natural conclusion from this statement is that farmers are opposed to protection except when it affects their own interests and that then they are as keenly in favour of it as any of those engaged in our hothouse manufactures. As the majority of farmers cannot possibly benefit by a protective tariff it would be wise if they would combine to suppress the wheat growers who have led the Union to give such a remarkable example of inconsistency. The duty on wheat cannot be defended on the principle of tariff for revenue only, but it should be made clear that its removal would necessitate reductions on the present tariff to balance the loss causedUo wheat growers if it were abolished.