HOW THE £1,200,000 LOAN IS SPENT.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 167, 22 April 1872, Page 3

HOW THE £1,200,000 LOAN IS SPENT.

The following excellent article on the expenditure of the £1,200,000 loan appears in the Herald of Friday last, which we have no doubt will be read with considerable interest by the miners on this field, who are so heavily taxed to meet such reckless expenditure : We shall confine ourselves in this article to the expenditure under loan. And in order that our readers may he able to understand the state of the loan account, we shall piesent the figures in an intelligible shape. We do so all the more willingly, because the return published by the Under-Secretary for Public Works, Mr Knowles, and which appeared in our paper a short time ago, only dealt with a portion of the loan. By that return it appeared that the expenditure on the Public Works account, up to December 31, 1871, was £629,702 ; and that crediting the account with “ recoveries and moiety of stamp duty, £20,492,” there was a credit balance, at the close of last year, of £140,789. It is impossible, however, to form a correct opinion of “ how the money goes ” from Mr Knowles’ return. It is correct as far as it goes ; hut it only' deals with the expenditure of £750,000 out of £1,200,000 borrjwed, and allocated to public works and immigration and “ defence and other

purposes.” We shall treat the whole as one account under the loan. This inode of dealing with it is only fair to the Government who administer the loan, and to the public who must repay it with interest. In compiling this account, we shall simply take the figures as we find them in the Gazette aud attached to the last Financial Statement by the Colonial Treasurer. We make this explanation al*o, in order that anyone who doubts the accuracy of our statement may check the account for themselves. The following figures, we think, will show “ how the money goes— Dr. Amount borrowed in Loudon £1,200,000 Public Works Account. —Moiety of stamp duty and recoveries to 31st Dec., 1871 ... £20,402 Defence Loan Account. Recoveries, tfcc., September quarter, 1871 9,95 G Ditto, Dec. quarter, 1871 7,237 37,085 £1,237,085 Cit. Disbursements up to June 30, 1871, on joint account of public Works and Defence Loan ... £592,365 Public Works A ccount —Expenditure, September quarter, 1871 £197,870 December quarter, 1871 159,006 350,870 Defence Loan Account —Expenditure, September quarter, 1871 109,163 Ditto, December quarter, 1871 ... 48,383 217,546 £1,100,787 The foregoing statement is up to the 31st of December, 1871, and docs not include any portion of expenditure for the March quarter, 1872, and the current expenditure in the June quarter. And here, we have to enter our protest against the apparent reluctance of the Government to publish the Treasury statements of expenditure of the loan. The justice of this remark will be apparent from the fact, that the statement for the September quarter, 1871, appeared in the Gazette of March sth, 1872, six months after date ; and that the statement for December, 1871, was published in the New Zealand Gazette of April 4, 1872, more than three months after date. If these returns are of any value, they should he published immediately on the completion of the periods to which they refer; and as the telegraph connection is now complete in the colony, the Government have no reasonable excuse for delaying their publication beyond a week at most after the termination of each quarter. We have abstained from making any comments on the foregoing statement. Our duty, as a public journalist, istosiiow lww the money goes, and we apprehend wo have succeeded in discharging that duty. As wc have already said, the public acnounts are open to all, and any of our readers may satisfy themselves in ten minutes of the accurrcy of the figures. We may add, in conclusion, that no more money can be borrowed under the Loan Act before the 30th of June, 1872, without the consent of Parliament.