THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 1903. THE NATION'S BALANCE-SHEET.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 15, 9 April 1903, Page 17

THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 1903. THE NATION'S BALANCE-SHEET.

women alike take an intelligent interest in almost every detail of our political life. Figures commonly make dull reading. A noted statesman of the nineteenth century often failed to secure a popular audience, or, when secured, to keep his hold upon the lobe of its ear, simply because he was deemed to be, in Kingsley's phrase, too 'odiously statistical.' But in New Zealand it is not so. There is probably no country where those who are, in brawn, brain, or mere money-bags, the nation's shareholders, scan with a keener and more critical interest the country's annual balance-sheet. And thus it was that a great throng of the expectant public assembled to hear the lengthy oral statement of New Zealand's trade and finance which was delivered by the Right Hon. the Premier at Gore last Friday evening.

Mr. Goschen, formei ly British Chancellor of the Exchequer, possessed, like Mulhall, the rare gift of surrounding the driest piles of dead-bone figures with an aureole of living, present interest. Mr. Seddon has no such faculty of thus gaily tricking out ' the sinews of the State.' But he had a tale to tell at Gore which men are ever willing to bear—a tale of a prosperous year, of a buoyant revenue, a substantial surplus, and of a future which is bright with roseate promise. ' I'he finances of the Colony,' said Mr. Seddon, ' were never sounder than now. There was an increased revenue, an increase of population, and an increase of productiveness. The Colony was better off and had brighter prospects than at any time before. Politically, socially, and pecuniarly, the condition of the people had vastly improved.' The revenue for the year 1902-3 was £6,328,500, an increase of £275,430 on that of the previous financial year — and this despite ' the reductions that had bean made in taxation, the reductions made on railway charges, and the increased conveniences which the people enjoyed.' The sturdy condition of the national well-being is further indicated by the relation between imports and exports. In 1902-3 New Zealand imported from over the sea goods valued at £11,484,000; but it sent abroad to other lands products of our mines and forests and fields and flocksand herds and factories which reached the grand total of £15,083,000. This is New Zealand's record, and it leaves a satisfactory balance of £3,599,000 in our young country's favor.

Alexander Hamilton and others held fast to the theory that a national debt"-, if it is not excessive, is a national blessing. Our policy of heavy borrowing has given us, both absolutely and by comparison with other countries, a heavy load of this particular form of ' blessing.'

ING LOUIS PHILIPPE attributed the political success of Englishmen to the fact that they took sufficient interest in their country's affairs to make them the subject of afterdinner discussion. With us, too, it is a hopeful sign of national success that men and

Our public debt now stands at the tidy round sum of £52,000,000. And our public bodies have bean borrowing to a pretty lively tune, for their net indebtedness at the close of the financial year 1901-2 stood at £8,063,277. But it must be borne in mind that more than a third of our public debt has been spent upon the construction of railways, roads, and bridges. During the past two years concessions to the value of more than half a million sterling have been made to the users of our railways, which, nevertheless, are more than paying interest on the money borrowed. Last year (as Sir J. G. Ward announced in Gore) was the record year of the New Zealand railways, the cash paid by them into the Treasury coffers amounting to £1,975,000. Railways, roads, and bridges have developed the country's vast resources, increased the quantity and enhanced the value of land under grass and crops, brought the producer within easier reach of markets, and thus helped to swell the Colony's wealth and replenish the coffers of its revenue. Mr. Seddon claims for his Government the construction of 475 miles of railway, 4295 miles of drayroads, 3153 miles of bridle-tracks, and 100 bridges of over 30 feet in span from April 1, 1891, to September 30, 1902. In the same period the interest on the public debt was reduced from £4 10s 3d to £3 15s 3d per head of the population ; and 'against the fact that the Public Debt of the Colony amounted to £65 [it was £63 in 1900] per head of the population must be set the other fact that the public and private wealth of the Colony amounted to £351 per head.'

The Premier reported a buoyant and healthful condition in the industrial side of New Zealand commercial life. 'In the past ten years,' said he, * the number of establishments had increased by 909, the number of hands employed therein by 16, 093, the wages paid by £1,289,921, the horse power used by 17,356, the value of land by £426,519, the value of buildings by £935,901, and the value of machinery and plant by £1,335,385.' It was frozen meat that lifted New Zealand out of the Slough of Despond. And the trade has grown and spread almost as fast as the magic beanstalk of Jack the Giant-killer. The export practically started in 1882 : its value was then represented by the modest sum of £19 339. In 1902 its money-worth rose to £2,708,763, and Mr. Seddon is sanguine that the present year's output will ' top the record.' So mote it be. The statesmanlike policy of throwing open the land and purchasing and parcelling out the large estates among the people more than justifies itself in the triumphant returns of New Zealand's exports of agricultural produce for 1902-3, as compared with those of the previous financial year. ' Our butter exports,' said Mr. Seddon, ' had increased by £832,969, cheese by £103,317, beef by £142,714, lamb by £674,283, wool by a weight of 3G,059,7341b, barley by 40,000 bushels, oats by the value of £429,939, and wheat by £43,101.' ' Reckoning our beef and mutton together,' Baid he, ' we are not far behind what the Argentine had exported in 1900.' 'With New Zealand's superior climate and the energy of her people, we are not,' he added, ' afraid of the Argentine,'

The land, after all, is the nation's best asset, its most permanent source of wealth. Cultivation — in the words of Gibbons — 'is the foundation of manufactures, since the productions of nature are the materials of art.' And the due encouragement and safeguarding of the agricultural interest is the best guarantee of a nation's prosperity and (in the temporal order) of the stability of its institutions. It is a wise and far-seeing statesmanship which, in New Zealand, has sought to make the laud the backbone of our national interests. And thus the process of settlement moves forward at a merry pace. 'As to land for settlement,' the Premier said, ' the total expenditure up to 31st of March, 1902, had been £2,229,128. On that sum the interest paid last year was £213,828, and the rents received came to £303,106, giving a piofit of £89,278. . This department had purchased 71,426 acres since the Act was passed, and J 84,254 acres were now under negotiation.' The money borrowed to aid settlers and purchase estates costs the taxpayers nothing, its earns a moderate profit ; and it is a chief fact in developing the splendid resources of the country. Mr. Seddon desires to see more population helping to swell the country's growing wealth and power. Would that his wish were a little

more operative, and that his Government would follow with energy the example which is attracting to Canada long processions of desirable settlers from the United Statts and from every country in Furope, and fast raising the Dominion to the status of a great and populous young nation. W e have room and verge enongh for a great population. Ours is a rising country. Jt is as yet merely in i s early infancy. Its resources are being rapidly harnessed ; but a vast deal of them still remain awaiting development. Ihe drought that has scourged Australia has turned the eyes of many of its farmers and settlers to this favored laud of green fields and running streams. And our own young men need not go to South Africa on a wild-goose chase after a shadow while they have the substance at their very doors in New Zealand.