THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, NOV. 22, 1911. AS OTHERS SEE US.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10484, 22 November 1911, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, NOV. 22, 1911. AS OTHERS SEE US.

Ite "Sydney Morning Herald" recently published an laiiticl© dealing with. "Politics in. New Zealand." As thfo journal cannot be charged with party ibias or prejudice bo far as this Dominion is concerned, its conclusions are worthy of reproduction. The "Horaild" says:— "AM the indications iptfomise Sir Joseph Ward and hm friends a particularly lively time in the general! elections now approaching. Tix the course of ten years of office, Sir Joseph has conre to represent ttlie Conservative, and even .the :lniperialiisit, elements' of society, and he- lias arnayed against him, in the first place, u "genuine" Labour party, and in (the isecond. a phalanx of determined prolmbdrtionists, who, il'ar [from (being satisfied with local option, put forth a istrenaiouis demand for "Dominion" prohibition. This l may seem absurd enough to us; hut the New Zealanders take it serir tously, and there is no doubt that the prohibitionist party must count as «i factor in: the possible scuttling of a ship of State that has weathered so many storms. The, really snrprtising ithing is that there lias not been

a ohlange of Government long ago. ; There is a limit to the number of | pro raises to be performed, and a Mm.it totho possible drain on a national > exchequer. Sir Joseph Ward ha® | strained iboth to the breaking point. I The unparalleled general prosperity [of tlie liast decade, concurrent with i enormousily mapild development and j piiimai-y resources, has super fioial'ly justified a borrowing pointy on a very I extended jscalo. But even without a j clhieck to progress, ismdh as is produc- I ed by bad seasons or bad masnkets, it i® plain that this cannot go on for ever, and that the breaking strain of taxation, hias altmost .been reached. Of course, ifchis. incidentally affords an argument against itlie "Dominion" plohib'itionisits, wlio may be fairly asked how ifchey are going to supply the deficit in revenue if they had their way. It is true that moat of the borrowed money {has been wisely expended, and that by far the larger proportion of it is revenue-produc-ing. Bout, for aJll that, a Government that 'lives on a borrowing policy is bound in the Jong run to come to grief. The trouble is that Sir Joseph Ward wi3i find at impossible +o stop boni-owing, for the clamour ior expenditure rises on every side. Nbthdng in Australia, for instance, equals l the earth ihumger of the New Zoalanders; and the only way in which it can be satisfied now is fry expensive resumptions paid'lor <,ut, J of licaai. It does not matter whether ' the tenure is freehold or leasehold. < jln any case, the initial liability is ] I thrown upon tlie ifcitate, and that is the immediate difficulty of the situation. Finance is the frock on which the Government rtlbireatenß, to split; but, in addition to that, no parcy can remain in power for twenty years without hearing a good deal about nivTiladmiiiistfl-iattton, and latterly ©uch charges have been frequent. What amount of truth there is in them can only be fairly judged by those on the ispot, but there i® vr, doubt that they represent the .rising tide'of'dissatisfaction. The p-iblio debt is now albout eighty-one million® sterling, and prosperous as the Dominion is that.is a burden that is not likely to be carried without a ■ good deal of grumbling. The Government generally manages to end its year with a smii-pluia, hut the observer, overseas is apt to fail to notice how much of those surpluses is due j to a 'igrowing iburden of taxation."