The Evening Bell.

"In its tongue there hang a thousand virtues."

Tuesday, November 10, 1885.

Once more the correspondent of our morning contemporary has made a political discovery. There is dissension it seems in the Cabinet, and every chance of a terrible disruption all about the North Island Trunk Railway loan. This is serious indeed. It would be more so perhaps, if the correspondent had not done it so often before. It would have a more alarming effect if he could have found out what the dissension was about, and who wore the dissenters. Nevertheless as it stands the sensation is well enough. It serves two good purposes at least. It keeps alive the idea that some of the Cabinet are bent on doing something which is very wrong; and it is a sort of certificate of character for one or two members of the Government who may be supposed to be locally interested in the question. The absurdity of the thing doesn't strike the correspondent, but judging from past experience, that is not surprising. Neither does it appear to have occurred to our contemporary, which is rather more remarkable. Yet it is absurd enough. It seems that somebody, name unknown, says the question of diverting the loan to other purposes has never come before the Cabinet. This is considered very important, evidently, as all that follows, both as letter and comment, depends upon it. Yet it is simply nonsense after all. Of course the question has not come before the Cabinet because no amount of discussion would enable the Cabinet to carry it out if proposed. Nor will it come before the Ministry hereafter for the same reason. That the loan will be raised about April next there can be no doubt, because the money will be needed. That it or any part of it will be diverted contrary to law to any other purposes there need be no fear, because it cannot be done.

If it were possible to make a certain class of minds understand the most elementary principles of Government finance, we should be saved a groat deal of very silly talk and writing on the subject. This, it would seem is at present past praying for. There are minds so dense that they cannot see anything which they don't feel to be their interest to see, page break and not acute enough, to perceive what is to their own interest. Such minds as these would be glad to see this loan unraised, even if the consequence should be that the Treasury bad to refuse payment of just claims from Public Works' contractors for work done, and from Civil servants for services performed. It would never occur to them that such a state of things would hurt New Zealand more than the delay of a Trunk Railway for twenty years. Fortunately all are not so stupid as this, and certainly the Cabinet as a whole is not. It will need no Council to decide that the colony must be in a position to pay its contractors and its officers, and oven a member representing Auckland or Wellington will raise no protest against this course.

When the loan is raised, as we have said before, it will be exactly in the same position as any other loan money. Its ultimate destination is made by law the Trunk railroad; its present employment will depend entirely on the exigencies of the Public Account. This is true now under the Stout Government; it would have been equally true under the Atkinson Government. There is no tapu affect-ing one railway loan which does not affect other loans. In the Treasury it will be money, and simply money—only in the books of account will it or can it be kept sacred for a special purpose. The trunk railroad has borrowed from other loans, and they in turn will undoubtedly borrow from it until the meeting of Parliament and for a good while longer. The question is not one of borrowing—with any Cabinet and any Treasurer that would have been a certainty. It is one of repayment, and this is the only possible hitch. If Parliament agrees to borrow more money, out of which advances can be repaid, all will be well. If it does not the Trunk Kail-road will be as effectually stopped as it could have been even had Major Atkinson carried his resolution about acquiring native lands along its course. These are the bare facts, and no amount of tall talk can alter them by one iota. The wishes of this Cabinet Minister or that will not affect them in any way; the incoherent protests of those who brought about the risk which now frightens them, cannot possibly remove it. It might of course have been more pleasant to have gone on in ignorance of these things until the next Session of Parliament, but it would certainly not have been any better. Disagreeable results always follow upon stupid conduct, and it would not have made the results in this case one whit less disagreeable that we only learnt them when nearly all the million loan had been advanced to other accounts to prevent repudiation by our Colonial Treasury.