The Temuka Leader TUESDAY, MAY 20, 1884. SIR JULIUS VOGEL.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1180, 20 May 1884, Page 2

The Temuka Leader TUESDAY, MAY 20, 1884. SIR JULIUS VOGEL.

Want of confidence in ourselves, Sir Julius Vogel says, is the cause of the commercial depression from which this colony suffers at present. What is wanted, he says, is a stimulant that will inspire confidence and increase the value of property. This is pure bosh, the very essence of nonsense. What lias ruined the colony is too much confidence. It is confidence which leads people to speculate, and' it takes very little discernment to see that overspeculation is Ihe cause of our present straitened condition. Is it want of confidence which has led men to give £ls and £2O an acre for land in this distiict, when it is impossible to make n profit of perhaps ten per cent on Ihe capital invested in it ? No. It is too much confidence that lias led men to buy land too dear, and without capital, with the result that they are so heavily mortgaged that it takes them all their time to pay the interest on the money which they had to borrow. Sir Julius Vogel is one of the idols of the people. 0 that some strong man could rise and crush out the influence of the people's idols by showing them that the most of them are political mountebanks with very little brains and less honesty ! It would do good, for no matter what those idols say it must be right. We no*ice that the Otago Daily Times, the Wellington Evening Post, and some other papers have at once jumped to the same conclusion as Sir Julius Vogel, and exnnss their admiration at the wonderful cleverness of the man who has found out this secret. The Otago

Daily Times is particularly obsequious. It can find no language to express if s admiration of the definiteness and completeness of the policy enunciated bv Sir Julius Vogel. Now, what is the fact? Sir Julius Vogel says that he would be in favor of abolishing the Property Tax, but he does, not bint in the remotest degree what kind of tax he would levy in its stead. He leaves people to imagine whatever tax they like. Is this definite ? He says we pay too much for education, and could get a better article for less money, but he does not say one word as to what that article is or ought to be. Is this definite ? And yet the Otago Daily Times goes into ecstasies over the definiteness and completeness of Sir Julius Vogel’s policy, just because he happens to be a political idol. It is rather humiliating that one of the leading papers of the colony is so incapably conducted as not to be able to sift the chaff from the corn. Want of confidence in the value of property, indeed, the very thing that has ruined us ! And how does Sir Julius Vogel hope to remedy this ? By finishing all the main lines of railway, by further immigration, and by improving our system of local government, fie does not tell us where he can get the money from to accomplish all this, which is another instance of Sir Julius Vogel’s definiteness. Of course we know where he will get it; we know that he can only get the money by borrowing it. There is no doubt but that to dash ten or twenty millions in upon us now would do some good, but as soon as it was spent we would bo worse off than ever, because we should have twice the amount of taxation to pay that we have at present. Temperance orators tell us that intoxicating drinks have a stimulating, but not a strengthening, effect upon the human system, and that though they may invigorate for the time being they eventually result in weakening the consumer of them. That is exactly the position of the colony as regards borrowing. Borrowing on the lines laid dovin by Sir Julius Vogel will inspire the people with false confidence, overspeculation will run riot again as in 1878, and when the money is spent the crash will come again, and there' will be nothing for us hut repudiation. Of all the dangers threatening the colony we think the Vogel danger is the greatest. He is, he says, going into Parliament for a T w months to consolidate parties, and try to do something to relieve the depression. He is a political idol, and whatever he proposes will be carried out, And what does he propose, but to plunge this colony deeper into debt ! We all know his extraordinarily extravagant ideas ; wo know that if he puts his hand in the matter at all, it will not be the million a year he will go in for, but some tremendous big sum that we cannot even imagine. This is madness, and if his scheme is carried out it will sink the colony to the lowest level of commercial depression. With all the boasted cleverness of the Timaru Herald it flies off at a tangent on the same string. It echoes Sir Julius’s words, and says he has hit the nail on the head. We shall have something more to say on this subject.