The Temuka Leader. THURSDAY, JULY 10, 1884. THE PROPOSED NATIONAL BANK.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1202, 10 July 1884, Page 2

The Temuka Leader. THURSDAY, JULY 10, 1884. THE PROPOSED NATIONAL BANK.

Mr S. C. Jolly, the working man's candidate for Ashburton, has taken up the cudgel in the Ashburton Guardian, and thus refers to the National Baok proposal : —" In 1870 the public debt wis £7,800,000, in 1883 £30,300,000, or in thirteen years an increase of £22,516,000. The mortgage upon private property was £30,000,000. We are now paying £4,000,000 a year for interest, or in thirteen years paid £26,000,000. Allowing the next thirteen years to increase at the same rate we will have to pay £52,000,000 for interest. Had a Govern* ment Bank been started thirteen years ago, with borrowing of two millions of money for a start, issuing out paper money and buying the gold from the diggers, the settlers having the land upon easy terms of payments, we should at the present day have the settlers with the Und belonging to them, tho debt of the colony paid off, and ourselves at the present day in a prosperous state, whereas the land system of this country has placed us in a far worse Btate than they are in Ireland. It is never too late to mend. Let us start a National Bank and issue out paper money, and work upon our own means. ,In thirteen years from now we will have a large amount of the public debt paid off, and th*e taxes far easier the whole time than what they are at present. You give the working men advice to place their interests in the bands of others. What have the others done for us? Allowing out of the 40,000 working men one third to be single men, or 13,000 out of that number, how many of us have to seek boarding-houses and hotels for homes, and are the greater part of the year without employment 1 The producer with the fruits of his labor going into another man's pocket instead of his own, the country in debt, business »t a standstill, no money in circulation, the revenue falling, and the country at a standstill, the people at their wits' end, and don't know what to do." Mr Jolly then continues to accuse the editor of that psper of having suppressed his speech, and urges that any looal paper which refuses to report candidates ought to be stopped, and that the editor ought to get ten years. We quite agree with Mr Jolly that it is a mean contemptible thing for a local paper to neglect or refuse to report the speech of a candidate because he happens to be poor. We may boast of our democratic institutions, of our freedom, and of many other things, but while we have amongst us men so contemptibly meanspirited as to suppress a working man's speech, we cannot deny that we have a great deal to be abbamed of. However, we may find an excuse for the poor man who nominally coatroh the Ashburton Guardian, in the fact that the paper belongs to a company of money-lenders of Ashburton, and he has to do as they direct. He is therefore tho slave of the purse, and on that ground he may be excused. It is, however, pleasant to see that the bank proposal is not altogether neglected. The glimpses we feot of Mr Jolly's address leads us to conclude that he is a man of extraoidinnry abilities, considering that he is not an educated man, and to find so serious a thinker as he appears to be, backing the proposal goes a long way towards proving that there is something in it. The Rev. Mr Smylhe, of Pleasant Point, also propounds a scheme which is practically the same. He suggests that tho Government should borrow the money at 4 per cent in England, and lend it 'to farmers hers at 5 per cent. It appears evident from these facts that there exists a strong feeling in favor of something being done to relieve the condition of the farmers, and we sincerely trust someone will find out the correct way of doing it. We care not what plan it is, so long as it brings prosperity to the country. God speed everv one whn tries to do his DB«t in that way.