The Wairarapa Daily. TUESDAY, MAY 3, 1887. THE FINANCES OF THE COLONY

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2588, 3 May 1887, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. TUESDAY, MAY 3, 1887. THE FINANCES OF THE COLONY

It is said that the special mission of the House of Representatives this session will be to restore the credit of the colony. During the last two or three sessions it has been allowed to run down like the celebrated "grandfather's clock," till we aro almost now expecting it to " stop short, never to go again." The House is mainly responsible for the unfortunate want of confidence in our resources which is apparent in the London money market. It has endorsed one reckless scheme after another, each and all of them telling'on the sensitive financial barometer. The last straw to break the back of the colony was probably the Midland railway, but then Canterbury is supposed to have boen saved, or to be on the road to salvation, through this project, and if New Zealand has ran a risk to help Canterbury round a corner, there is perhaps some gain as a set-off' agaiust a big loss. At any rate Canterbury, having won at the cost of the colony, will probably now unite in the work of credit restoration. Some attempt has been made to attribute the bad odor in which New Zealand now stands at Homo to the attacks made upon the colony by Mr Froude and other writers. It is, however, impossible to deny that we have given critics some very good openings for hostile comment, and that it is the holes in our ooat, rather than the report of them, which has injured our credit. In these days of rapid ocean travel, a continuous stream of globe trotters passes through New Zealand, taking notes of all they see andhear, and speaking of us as they find us. These globe trotters are somewhat dangerous visitors]; they are clever, wide awake men, who have their wits sharpened by knocking about both in the old world and the new, The mysterious financiers who rule the money market in London havo any number of own correspondents, who keep them well posted as to our position. They know what we are about better than wo do ourselves. They know we must have been hard up when Sir Julius Vogel collared the sinking fund on our loans; they know that we had no business to give a couple of millions of acres of land away for the Midland railway ; they know that we are ruining our chances of pulling straight by repudiating crown grants issued to settlers who have made their homes here; they know, too, that we are putting hundreds of men on land who cannot reasonably be expected to grass and stock it; they know that the cry of the unemployed rings from Auckland to Invercargill; and that generally we are in a bad way. We can well imagine what the globe trotters say in London about us. Are not our rulers dreamers of dreams, and schemers of schemes, instead of common sonse men of business ? The House will have no easy task this session, even in commencing the work of restoring the credit of the colony, but it is satisfactory to find at last that the country realises theunfcunate position in which it is placed, ; and that financial reform is a dominant sentiment in the breasts of most mem-1 bers of the House. '