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A compendium of official documents relative to native affairs in the South Island, Volume One.

III.—Public Revenue

III.—Public Revenue.

Regarding the use of the public revenue, I refer you to the instructions of the Lords of the Treasury. But, in addition to the specific rules which their Lordships have laid down, it is my duty to impress on you some more general considerations suggested by recent experience, as well as by a more comprehensive retrospect to the history of our colonies.

Frugality is one of the indispensable bases of all good government and social welfare in such communities as those which have recently been formed in New Zealand. I refer not merely to a wise economy in public expenditure, but to simplicity and plainness of living in domestic circles. As the Governor of the Colony, your example will be of decisive weight on this head; and therefore I cannot scruple to touch on a subject which, if apparently of a private and personal, is really of a public and general, interest. I admit that, as the representative of your Sovereign in a remote part of the Queen's dominions, you may be subjected to demands on your hospitality, and to claims for the exhibition of some degree of state, which it may be most difficult to resist, and which it might not be right altogether to disappoint. But, on the other hand, such demands and such claims, if too readily conceded, must inevitably urge you into an outlay of money and a style of life highly inconvenient to yourself, and still more prejudicial to the colonists at large, by exciting amongst them an emulation in the mere embellishments of life, to the sacrifice of many of its substantial interests and duties.

The governor of an infant colony should aim at nothing beyond the decencies of a private and moderate establishment, and his ambition should be not to outshine, but to guide, befriend, and protect those who are living under his authority.

Economy in public expenditure will be greatly facilitated by the observance of these rules. To those who have so lately quitted the wealthiest and one of the most ancient of the monarchies of Europe, it is difficult to dissociate the feelings of loyalty to their Sovereign, and of attachment to their mother country, from the desire for those refinements by which the Throne is surrounded and the kingdom at large is embellished.

But for these things, the time is, as yet, unripe in New Zealand. At the commencement and for some years afterwards, we must be content with what is useful, plain, and solid, remitting to a future day what is merely ornamental. On this principle every work should be undertaken the charge of which is to be defrayed from the public revenue; and, even so, the utmost possible parsimony will still be inadequate to secure the means of attaining many objects highly conducive to the general good. Such as are least urgent most therefore be postponed to such as are more immediately pressing. The public health and safety must, for example, precede every other care. Provision must be made for the prevention and punishment of crime, in preference to improvements in internal communications. Religious instruction and elementary teaching must be regarded as having a claim prior to education in the liberal arts and sciences; and so of the rest. In your annual estimates, therefore, you will stedfastly select as objects of expenditure those services the page 31 neglect of which would be attended with the greatest amount of direct and immediate evil, however importunate may be the solicitations for votes of money towards the advancement of schemes of a more splendid and impressive character.

With a view to economy, it will be necessary to establish and enforce a system of extreme punctuality and order in rendering and examining the accounts of all persons intrusted with the receipt and expenditure of the public money. You will, as far as possible, make the payment of the salary of every such person dependent on his producing the proper certificate that his accounts up to that date have been fully rendered, examined, and passed. This may not be altogether practicable, but you should aim at the nearest possible approach to such a regulation.

Another important rule for your guidance is to promote as far as possible the establishment of municipal and district governments for the conduct of all local affairs, such as drainages, by-roads, police, the erecting and repairing of local prisons, court-houses and the like. Independently of the excellent uses of such institutions, regarded in a political light, there are none more consonant with the English character and habits, and none better calculated to effect an efficient and frugal expenditure of public money. It is of the utmost importance to withdraw from the Governor the care of these innumerable local petty details, and to relieve the public treasury from the wasteful expenditure in which it must be involved, so long as it is burdened with the double charge of collecting local assessments and of effecting local works. Nor is there any better mode of training the colonists to the exercise of the more important duties of a free people and a representative government.

You will probably find the two great sources of revenue most available, least burdensome, and least unpopular, to be—1st, Duties on imports, especially on spirits, tobacco, tea, coffee, and sugar; and 2nd, Assessments oh uncultivated land in the hands of private persons. To the last, I shall advert again in the sequel; but with regard to duties on imports, there is one general remark to which your attention should be early given.

It is impossible that a revenue should be raised on an imported article which can also be raised within the Colony itself, unless there be a duty of Excise in aid of the duty of Customs, or unless the indigenous growth or production of that article be effectually prohibited. Such prohibitions are always difficult; and, if the particular culture or manufacture has attained to any considerable maturity, they are often impracticable, or can be enforced only at the cost of the most expensive compensations. In New Zealand, the manufacture of spirits would be very easy, and probably extensive. An early prohibition of distillation will therefore be requisite. In some of the other Australian colonies the policy of such a measure was not discovered until too late; and it was then effected at the expense of paying large compensations to those whose distilleries were stopped, and at the further expense of creating much public clamour and discontent. Yet, as the revenue on spirits and spirituous liquors is at once the most certain and most abundant source from which the Colonial Treasury could be supplied, and is less open to just objections than almost any duty which could be imposed, it seems necessary that no obstacle should be permitted to prevail, or, if possible, to arise, by which the supply drawn from this import would be prevented.

The Colony of New Zealand will, in the commencement of its separate political existence, be indebted to the Colony of New South Wales for any advances made from the one Treasury to the other, for the necessary support of the Government of the younger Colony, during the period which has elapsed since your departure from this country. This, however, is the single debt with which New Zealand will be burdened, and there will, I trust, be very little difficulty in ascertaining and paying the amount. For the future, it will be your duty to take care that the system of defraying the cost of government by loans be strictly avoided, and that the expenses of each year be raised within the year itself. Strong as are the motives which occasionally recommend the anticipation of the public income of future years, I conclude, from all the information which the records of this office supply, that in newly-settled colonies the benefit of this practice is so entirely counterbalanced by the evils resulting from it, and that it is so difficult in practice to enter on this course at all without advancing to the ruinous embarrassments towards which it leads, as to justify or require a general interdict against public loans of any description. Extreme cases may, of course, arise, to which every such general rule must yield; but it will be, except in such cases, the habitual rule of your conduct.