wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878.] WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1893.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4528, 20 September 1893, Page 2

wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878.] WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1893.

SECOND EDITION

At a time like the present when I people whocan offer excellent security > fiud it difficult to get advances, it i 8 slightly absurd to aeo Mr Hogg and other members of the House go to the Government, to oak for loans on indifferent securities. When there is tightness in the money market it would be really a wonderful thing to be able to get relief through the , Government Exchequer, but this wonderful assistance is not likely to be forthcomingbecausewhen banks, or monetary institutions as Borne people call them, begin to play a certain tune, the Government as well as the struggling settler, the merchant, or the storekeeper have to dance to it. A Government cannot manufacture money aud very frequently a Colonial Treasurer hasasmuch difficulty tomake both ends meet as the owner of a heavily mortgaged sheep run. A movement has recently been attempted to obiain Government advances for leaseholders, perpetual or in perpetuity, whioh must be exiremely perplexing to Liberal politicians. Leases which stretch into perpetuity have been invented to protect'good Liberals from money lenders, to eave them from being bled to death by interest charges and to keep their land always out of pawn. But the holders of these privileges ate dissatisfied, they must borrow, they most have money and so they foroo their representatives to go hat in hand to the Government for that assistance which bus been demonstrated to be their ruin, These politicians are as it were, all pledged to abstinence, yet they are moving heaven and earth to get a bottle for their friends. At the present time the Government dare not pledge themselves to make suoh advances, not because by go doing they would violate their principles, but because they would impair their credit, and this would mean that they would have to borrow thcnipelves. If the Government asked the Banks now for assistance they would probably he refused. The moral of the whole thing is that if leaseholders in perpetuity—more or lesi—must have money, and their properties won't command loans at reasonable rates in the open money market, they had better get them converted into freeholds, The Government ought not. to go to their rescue tny more than they should go to the resoue of the merchants who from a similar cause are Buttering from trade depression. The polioy of the present administration has been to keep leasehold settlers from the money lender. If this polioy ; breaks down in practice, the remedy is not to turn the Government into a money lender, but to break down the barrier, whioh has been intentionally placed in the way of such settlers obtaining advances through ordinary channels.