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South Canterbury Times, Issue 2377, 29 October 1880, Page 2

Tine Bank returns for the quarter display some signiJicant figures. In round numbers the total liabilities of the New Zealand Banks amount to £9,000,000,and the assets arc stated at nearly .£14,000,000 of which a little over £2,000,000 consists of coin and bullion. In other words about one seventh of our actual currency consists of coin and bullion, the remaining six-sevenths being paper. The ({overnment deposits amount to half a million, while private deposits reach the respectable total of eight millions. Only a little more than half of this amount is bearing interest. These figures show that there is no great lack of capital in the colony, but that people are either afraid or unwilling to invest. Here we have eight millions of money—nearly twice the amount of the last big | oftl1 —lying eomparitively dormant in the hands of the Banks. ‘ What is the inference? The colony, we are constantly told, is teeming with undeveloped riches, but these dormant treasures can only be opened with a golden key ? The key is there, but the hand that should use it is paralysed. And why ? Is it not because nearly everything has been done that possibly could be done to discourage investment? The administration is not alone to blame, although we look upon the property tax and the heavy Customs’ imposts on machinery and material required for manufacturing purposes and unobtainable within the colony as direct obstructions and discouragements to thrift and enterprise.

Local bodies in almost every direction with a supercilious contempt for the indirect contributors turn up their noses at.local manufactures, and dole out their money like charitable offerings to foreign workshops. It is because colonial industries are handicapped by outrageous imposts and ignored by distributing bodies, that our manufactures arc in a state bordering on decay, our coalfields merely tapped on the surface, and mines of wealth remain buried, while eight millions of capital lies practically corroding for want of use —locked up in the hands of the banks. We have in our hands a Sydney newspaper in which the Government-of New South Wales invite tenders for3B railway locomotives to be made within the colony, while beneath it nearly a column of advertisements appear from local and other bodies, inviting tenders for costly machinery and appliances which the Government of New Zealand or the Lyttelton or Timaru Harbor Boards, or the Christchurch Cathedral Commissioners,would never dream of placing at the disposal of colonial artisans. It is very little use quarrelling with a tariff which oppresses everything indiscriminately and fighting over the question of Free Trade and Protection so long as the industrial patriotism which has built America and is flourishing in every other colony around us is rendered conspicuous by its absence in New Zealand. It is this contemptible and unpatriotic treatment of native industries that is driving the artisans and small manufacturers who arc wanted to developc our manufactures away to such places as New South Wales and Victoria where the value of new manufactures is generally recognised and the authorities are neither such fools or knaves as to expend newly borrowed capital in the laboratory of the lender.