THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

Waikato Times, Volume XIII, Issue 1157, 25 November 1879, Page 3

THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

TO THE EDITOB. Sib,—That the statement as put before the country by Major A tkinson on Monday night will give serious dissatisfaction in some quarters is only to be expected for the reason that the people have been “educated” by former Governments to expect far different things in a Financial Statement. It is rather an unpleasant transition from the soul-stirring personations with which Sir J. Vogel used to enthral the multitude or the state stastistics and common places with which Mr Ballanco lulled its easily allayed fears The time is long past for dallying with a question on which so much depends as the finance of a country so much steeped in debt as New Zealand. Major Atkinson has simply proved how.the deficit has been occasioned, and hits the nail fair on the head in his denunciation of the system that has obtained of reckoning as income what in reality is capital. Apart from the thoroughly wrong principle of reckoning capital as income, it is a fact known to the 1 merest tryo in business that the sale of land is the thing first affected by the slightest depression in the money market. It is folly to suppose it has not struck former Treasurers in the same light, but the reason is not far to seek, they lacked the courage that was required to tell the people that they must psepare themselves for additional taxation, and that too of the most direct kind, They took the, for the time, pleasanter expedient of staving off the evil day by dipping into capital, an expedient that could only end in disaster to themselves and ruin to the country if persisted in. That the Statement is calculated to do anything but good is not to be doubted, as showing a willingness bn the part of our rulers to face our liabilities by judicious taxation, and at the same time conserve the public estate by bona fide settlement of the land rather than by filtering ita way in an attempt to stave off present pressure. The Ministry have set themselves a hard and unenviable task and deserve the sympathy of the people in their endeavor to set the long neglected affairs of the country in order. While giving them every credit for wishing to do justice to all I cannot help raising my voice against the imposition of 20s a ton on all fencing wire, staples, &c«, as proposed in the new tariff, as a tax calculated to cause considerable loss to a class of the community already taxed or about to be taxed to the uttermost. The imposition has not even the poor recommendation of being a protective one, fencing wire not being produced in the colony. A straw shows the set of the current. It behoves the farmers to watch carefully any revision cf the tariff to see that they are not used unfairly in the matter. In the present juncture they would do well to take a leai out of - their neighbours’ (the Victorian farmers) book, and take steps to make themselves felt as a power in the State by the formation of political unions, and sc bring pressure on the Government tc just M ]

mean to say that their grievances have yet reached the dimensions of the Victorians. —I am., Tede Liberal.