OUR PRESENT POLICY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2706, 14 November 1889, Page 3

OUR PRESENT POLICY.

TO THH KIUTOU.

Sin, —It is a strange anomaly that while I Now Zealand possesses so many advantages far above the average of nations, that during the late univetsal depression the value of our properties both in town and country should have fallen in so remarkable a degree, as contrasted with that of the neighbouring colonies or any other part of tho civilised world; and also that marked result of driving the flower of our mechanics and labourers from our midst. The above contains a great amount of solid material for contemplation among the electors of New Zealand. It is certainly not, to be accounted for on account of the incubus of our national debt, as this can clearly be proved as not above that which a nation of our resources can easily bear, and can only be considered as an argument worthy of a political adventurer. The towns, as well as the country, are now awakening from their apathv, as they can clearly sec that the soCalled policy of our administration in its national polity, including railway policy and incidence of taxation, as at present instituted, has a direct and indirect ell'ect of resnicting production for export or otherwise. Settlement of our lands repress enterprise, prevents capital from corning iu ouv midsi, and the development of our resources generally as a nation. And for what purpose? To keep up a useless, expensive and improvident civil service ot such overgrown proportions that it excites the wonder of all our visitors from olrievsettled countries, and puzzles them (o find out how such a state of things can be. sup ported, quite at variance with all tho experience taught, by history or analogy. At the same tim" the natural accompaniment of such adverse eruditions, insecurity of investment, totally unhinges all the relations between labour and capital with any view to progress, dragging each in the train of what must prove ultimate disaster to the state, and its victims still as infatuated as those whose superstition leads them to fall before the wheels of a Juggernaut car to meet destruction. Such, and such only, is the tendency of the present national policy, and allowed to exist in a country with free institutions, which possesses the elements of purgation—ample franchise—within it; and yet the electors will not do their duty. Political, as well as other sinners, invariably reap tho harvest which they sow.—l am, etc.,

Thomas H. White I'erndale, Taupiri. Nov. Stli.