NEW ZEALAND BORROWING

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 156, 29 May 1886, Page 7

NEW ZEALAND BORROWING

The Australasian says :~~Sir Julius Vogel, the New Zealand Treasurer, talks about borrowing like a political gambler, who cares only for the immediate piesent — the poor present of liis own waning day — but Mr Stout, the Premier, deals with public affairs like a man of business. In his speech at Invercargill, Mr Stout spoke much common sense. The time has nearly ai rived, in In 3 opinion, when the colony must begin to edge oft borrowing. New Zealand is loaded with a public debt, which is not remunerative like the Victorian or the New Scuth Wales loans, but entails a heavy annual charge on the revenue. Mr Stout will have none of Sir George Grey's " fads" for buying up the estates of private owners and settling people artificially on the land. iNor will he listen for a moment to the demand of another class of faddists, who fancy the colony can be made prosperous by issuing State bank notes. Mr Stout will not allow for a moment that the cure for the depression can be supplied by legislation. The depression will pass away when the units of which the general community 13 made tip are again square in their finances ; for what does a* depression mean but that so many of us have overrun the constable, exhausted our resources, and got into debt ? And who feel the bad times first and most severely ? The classes among whom thrift is conspicuously wanting — the people who ppend all their earnings as they go along, laying aside nothing for a lainy day. As a rule the AngloSaxon is thriftless or reckless of the morrow. He is enterprising and hopeful, and advances by bounds. Closefistedness is the peculiarity of ]the few, whom the many despise ; yet, if it were not for the saving propensity of the few, every drought would reduce the people to starvation. It is computed that notwithstanding the vast wealth with has been stored up in England and America, a year's idleness would exhaust it to the last penny. In Oriental countries the people perish by thousands when the crops fail or the streams mn dry, because they live like the grasshopper instead of the ant.