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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74

IV

IV.

We charge the Ministry with having so largely increased the Public Debt that the colony must eventually become bankrupt.

The most effective way of proving this accusation will be to quote the last political Manifesto of the National Association of New Zealand. The authors of this Manifesto say :—

"We charge the present Ministry with misgoverning the country, and pursuing a policy which has been, and is, disastrous to the welfare of the people."

After this dreadful accusation, which neither Ministers nor their warmest supporters have dared to deny, the Manifesto continues:— page 7

"1. It (the Ministry) has increased the public debt

from £38,075,257 in 1891,

to £43,006,889 in 1896, an addition

of £4,931,632 in five years.

"2. It has increased real and contingent liabilities amounting to several millions, and is still borrowing." The real and contingent liabilities here spoken of must be close to £6,000,000, in addition to the foresaid increase of £4,931,632.

"3. It has increased the taxation collected

from £2,327,430 in 1891,

to £2,554,797 in 1896, thus

adding £227,343 per annum to the burdens of the people.

"4. It has increased the annual cost of administration since 1891 by the sum of £328,095 10s. 6d.

"5. It has pursued a system of secret borrowing, resulting in an impairment of National Liberty."

In reference to our financial condition at present, there is no doubt that the total indebtedness of the colony amounts to upwards of £43,000,000. Though the utmost ingenuity has long been displayed by successive Governments in man œuvring the income and expenditure of the colony, and in confusing and concealing the true state of our finances, yet there seems to be solid grounds for believing that some £25,000,000 of our borrowed money have been lost through the blundering and plundering of the men to whom we entrusted the government. From our annual Budgets and other Governmental statements we are positively driven to the inference that our Railways and other Public Works cannot exceed £18,000,000, so that the debt for which we have nothing to show amounts to about £25,000,0000. From these facts it follows irresistibly that our Government have been expending annually, ever since the commencement of the Public Works Policy, a million sterling for which we have no equivalent, no assets. And of all the Governments that have come and gone since 1870, the present has been the most extravagant and the most inexcusable, for it was lifted into office pledged to retrenchment and to the complete stoppage of all borrowing.

page 8

A short comparison of New Zealand and British finance will illustrate the shameful depth of indebtedness into which we have sunk since 1870. Bearing in mind that our population is less than three-quarters of a million souls, and that the population of the British Islands is at least fifty times as numerous, the extravagance of our Colonial Government is equal to what the extravagance of the British Government would have been if the British had spent annually £50,000,000 more than their income. At this rate, since 1870, when our extravagance began, the British Government would have been burdened with a debt of £1,200,000,000 (twelve hundred millions sterling), that is, nearly double the present British National Debt. Besides, the huge debt, which our Representatives have succeeded in hanging around the neck of the colony, is terribly crippling its industries and maiming its resources. Unfortunate New Zealand ! It requires no unusual degree of prophetic inspiration to forecast what this indebtedness, increasing annually by a million sterling, without any proportionate increase of population to share the burden, must end in. What else can the end be but colonial bankruptcy and disgrace ?