THE STANDARD'S CRITICISM ON THE COLONY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2185, 10 July 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE STANDARD'S CRITICISM ON THE COLONY.

Thk following is the article on New Zealand from the London Standard of the Ist May, which has attracted so much attention : — South Australia yesterday successfully raised another large loan in ' London, and now stands beside its rivals, ! Queensland and t^ew Zealand. Theie three colonies are the most debt-ridden of all the Australian group. Their public burdens have attained an amount of between fifty and sixty pounds per head, and everything they possess is in so me degree mortgaged. Now Zealand, desponding colonists allege, has now nothing left to p.iwn, except its climate. This is brave borrowing, but no fitcnd of the j colonies can sec it go on, as it has been doing for the last dozen years, without | misgiving. Borrowed money is always dear money, and the community in the hands of the usurer suffers just as keenly as the individual For a time there ia riotous abundance, but afterwards conic miseiy and slavery and want. As yet. ami vvhiln the lendeis of money in England keep their pockets open to any call, most of these Australian colonies are in the time of abundance. Mmi Q tera of the State and their friends travel in satinlined saloon railway carriages, champagne is pressed upon the visitor half-a dozen times a day. the race for money is kept up vigorously— all is luxury, and the borrowed splendours of civilisation aro looked on as evidences of •• progress." But the darker consequences of this spendthrift existence are lowering over some of these communities. No passages iv Mr J. A. Froude's " Oceana'are more significant than those in which he de«cribes the condition of New Zealand. There we have a country favoured above all others in its natural resources, and yet it is * land over which the shadows of decay seem to be already falling by reason of its enormous debts. Loans mean an artificial prosperity. Population, instead of scattering over the land to till it, to extract the wealth from it, collect in towns at points where the borrowed money flows freely. Ihe town of Auckland, says Mr Froude, has a population of thirty thousand— (the whole colony has less thin half a million) — because there, as elsewhere, the labourers crowd in *' for tne high wages, and music halls, and the drink shops." The Municipality finds these men] work by raising loans in England, which are spent in, amongst other work 3, excavating the biggest graving dock in the world. "The colony collectively, and the municipalities separatively, seem contending which can borrow most handsomely." Mr Froude ''did not find this wholly satisfactory." We should think not. It is not satisfactory to the sober and the sensible among the colonists themselves. They see their country being ruined by debt, and can, apparently, do nothing to stop it. The bulk of the people in New Zealand, and no doubt in all the Colonies afllicted with the mainia for raising loans, go on with a light heart. Mr Froude was assured by one shrewd New Zealand gentleman that interest on the debt was at present paid out of the loans, and the best testimony he could get, that of bankers, admitted that much of the money was wasted. Palaces, mansions, manu factories, capacious harbours, far-stretch-ing railways were being built before the lanrt was peopled, and, ot cours", capital thus spent was as remunerative as sovereigns would be if sown broadcast in a wheat field. But the money goes with a light heart ; it is not their own. "As long as England will lend we will borrow," says the careless New Zealander. And when England ceases t"> lend ? Then New Zealand will cease to pay interest, -o one intelligent colonist told Mr Froude, also with a light Ivart " Nor could I make him see that after all the consequences to them would be serious, at all. We should lose our money, but they would have paid us it they could. His coolness took my breath away.'' It would be well if the foolish s.varms of people who lend their mou^y on this kind of ri->k were also to be startle'! out of themselves by this fr.nik avowal. For them, for England, the consequences of a repudiation of d^bt by one ot the colonies would be most serious. A blow would thereby be give.i to the mercantile credit and standing of the country, from which it would take many years to recover. Yet, according to Mr Froude, New Zealanders discuss the prospect of repudiation as calmly afarmer's might last year's weather. And there are forty millions of English sovereigns in that colony if there is a penny— forty millions and more, lent to less than half a million of people. Be- . cause of this debt the population swarms to the towns, as we h»ve stated, and the uncultivated state of the country lessens the chances of work tor the immigrants. Thus, on the one hand, wages are kept, artificially high by the borrowed money, while on the other immigration is discouraged. Those who enjoy thy good things bought by the loans object to the immigrants lest their influx should lower wages. Au artificial lite is fostered, with the strange result that amidst the show of abundance there is no prosperity, no progress. Borrowing has to proceed at an ever-accelerating pace to keep thing* at their normal level, because the weight ot the debt is mouth by month becoming more crushing. Surely it is one of the strangest spectacles the world ever saw, to find a land not one-fiftieth part occupied so tied up and beparchmented that new arrivals cannot find a place to put in a spade. Hardly a steamer leaves New Zealand without carrying away men who have failed to discover any means of earnidg their bread there The subsistence limit grows narrower as the debt mounts. A Land Tax however, would not as Mr Froude seems to think, cure this. New Zealand has a long stormy course of experience before bptter days dawu upon her. With such conditions upon him, with repudiation an open question, and in sight of a beggared Treasury, Sir Julius Vogel, the Colonial Treisurer of New Zealand, has lately come forward with a remedial programme. It is a programme worthy of his past career, but one more fraught with disaster to the colony it would be hard to find. "Were one-tenth only of what Mr Froude says, or of what we say, true, it would be a policy of folly. With the facts as they arc it is madness, for Sir Julius Vogel's plan is neither more nor less than still further borrowing. He and his supporters have lately been stumping the country, and their plan is to raise so much a year in order to build more railways, assist immigrants, and carry out more " public works." The yearly sum estimated varies in amount ; but the total to be thus flung after the millions gone ueforo is put at ten millions. Anil no doubt, if this money is raised and spent, the. day of reokoning will be postponed. New Zea- ! land will seem to flourish, or, at the worst will not be bankrupt the while ; but is it statesmanlike merely to devise a measure for keeping off the harvest of misery for a few years? What will be \ the condition of the colony five or sixyears hence should Sir Julius, as is probable enough, have his way ? We have : obtaiued a glimpse of its present condition, through the <j«bt\ (iu prejudiced eyes of Mr Froude. It is that o{ a land where want do^js the hct:h of a tairdrv, J precarious splendour. Will it be auy better after another ten millions have iWn borrowed ? By no possibility. That new debt would render lite harder, more tinendurably miserable than it is now, because the very immigrants imported with part of it would in time mostly have to seek employment ehewhere. The "wages fund" would dry up. and the additional debt would but enlarge the necessities of the colony for yet more loans. The question would then once more be how to stave off the day of reckoning. If heavy loans are needed now to prevent New Zealand from fulfilling what her citizens appear to regard as hvr manifes 1 " destiny much nior" •you.d they 'k ivquirci wii^u >\h S.» j

investing classes in England should read Mr Froude's work— now brought withiu reach ot the humblest among them — and look at profits of thit dangerous kind in the light it affordi. Here is a colony wasting millions of the loans been ti so it could not pay its way a week without them. It lives by borrowed money because its borrowings in past year- havi* twisted and diverted the life of the inhabitants from its natural course. A colony in the true sense is not what we find, but a soil in the grasp of speculators — a people huddled into towns, depen* dent upon ••■public works" for subsistence; municipalities "joyfully " dispensing other people's money, a land of Banks and Mortgage Companies and Finance Companies ; a community whose very life is jobbed away on the Stock Exchange with no more thought than if it were so much hemp. Such a country ought not to have another penny of English savings, be the consequences what they may. Better face the worst, and force the colonies to do so