Part 13 (2/2)

The southern land revenue, thus swollen, was a glittering temptation to politicians at Wellington. As early as 1874 it was clear that more colonial revenue would be wanted to pay the interest on the growing public debt. Vogel decided to appeal to the old Centralist party and overthrow the Provinces. Their hour was come. The pastoral tenants nearly everywhere disliked the democratic note growing louder in some of them. New settlers were overspreading the country, and to the new settlers the Provincial Councils seemed c.u.mbrous and needless. Fresh from Great Britain and with the ordinary British contempt for the inst.i.tutions of a small community, they thought it ridiculous that a colony with less than half a million of people should want nine Governments in addition to its central authority. The procedure of the Provincial Councils, where Mr. Speaker took the chair daily and a mace was gravely laid on the table by the clerk, seemed a Lilliputian burlesque of the great Mother of Parliaments at Westminster.

Nevertheless, the Provinces did not fall without a struggle. In both Otago and Auckland the older colonists mostly clung to their local autonomy. Moreover, Sir George Grey had taken up his abode in the Colony, and was living quietly in an islet which he owned near Auckland. Coming out of his retirement, he threw himself into the fight, and on the platform spoke with an eloquence that took his audiences by storm, all the more because few had suspected him of possessing it. Keen was the fight; Major Atkinson, _quondam_ militia officer of Taranaki, made his mark therein and rose at a bound to take command of the Centralists; the Provincialists were fairly beaten; the land pa.s.sed to the Central Government. The management of local affairs was minutely subdivided and handed over to some hundreds of boards and councils which vary a good deal in efficiency, though most of them do their special work fairly enough on accepted lines.

Though colonists join in complaining of the number of these no serious attempt has, however, been yet made to amalgamate them, much less to revive any form of Provincialism. Munic.i.p.al enterprise has made few attempts in New Zealand to follow, however humbly, in the wake of the great urban councils of England and Scotland. Water companies indeed are unknown, but most of the towns depend upon contractors for their supplies of light; munic.i.p.al fire insurance is only just being talked of; recreation grounds are fairly plentiful, but are not by any means always managed by the munic.i.p.ality of the place. None of the town councils do anything for the education of the people, and but few think of their entertainment. The rural county councils and road boards concern themselves almost solely with road-making and bridge-building. The control of hospitals and charitable aid, though entirely a public function not left in any way to private bounty, is entrusted to distinct boards. Indeed, the minute subdivision of local administration has been carried to extreme lengths in New Zealand, where the hundreds of petty local bodies, each with its functions, officers, and circle of friends and enemies, are so many stumbling-blocks to thorough--going amalgamation and rearrangement. In New Zealand the English conditions are reversed; the munic.i.p.al lags far behind the central authority on the path of experiment. This is no doubt due, at least in part, to the difference in the respective franchises. The New Zealand ratepayers' franchise is more restricted than that under which the English councils are elected.

A few words will be in place here about the continuance and outcome of the Public Works policy. Sir Julius Vogel quitted the Colony in 1876, but borrowing for public works did not cease. It has not yet ceased, though it has slackened at times. In 1879 a commercial depression overtook the Colony. The good prices of wool and wheat sank lower and lower; the output of gold, too, had greatly gone down. There had been far too much private borrowing to buy land or to set up or extend commercial enterprises. The rates of interest had often been exorbitant. Then there happened on a small scale what happened in Victoria on a larger scale twelve years later. The boom burst amid much suffering and repentance. In some districts three-fourths of the prominent colonists were ruined, for the price of rural produce continued on the whole to fall relentlessly year after year until 1894. The men who had burdened themselves with land, bought wholly or largely with borrowed money, nearly all went down. Some were ruined quickly, others struggled on in financial agony for a decade or more.

Then when the individual debtors had been squeezed dry the turn of their mortgagees came. Some of these were left with ma.s.ses of unsalable property on their hands. At last, in 1894, the directors of the bank which was the greatest of the mortgagees--the Bank of New Zealand--had to come to the Government of the day to be saved from instant bankruptcy. In 1895 an Act was pa.s.sed which, while guaranteeing the bank, virtually placed it beneath State control, under which it seems likely gradually to get clear of its entanglements. This was the last episode in the long drama of inflation and depression which was played out in New Zealand between 1870 and 1895. No story of the Colony, however brief, can pretend to be complete which does not refer to this. The blame of it is usually laid upon the public works policy. The money borrowed and spent by the Treasury is often spoken of as having been wasted in political jobs, and as having led to nothing except parliamentary corruption and an eternal burden of indebtedness and taxation. This is but true to a very limited extent. It was not the public borrowing of the Colony, but the private debts of the colonists, which, following the extraordinary fall in the prices of their raw products between 1873 and 1895, plunged so many thousands into disaster. Nine-tenths of the money publicly borrowed by the Colony has been very well spent. No doubt the annual distribution of large sums through the Lands and Public Works departments year after year have had disagreeable effects on public life. In every Parliament certain members are to be pointed out--usually from half-settled districts--who hang on to the Ministry's skirts for what they can get for their electorates. The jesting lines at the head of this chapter advert to these. But they must not be taken too seriously. It would be better if the purposes for which votes of borrowed money are designed were scrutinized by a board of experts, or at least a strong committee of members. It would be better still if loans had to be specially authorized by the taxpayers. But when the worst is said that can be said of the public works policy, its good deeds still outweigh its evil. It is true that between 1870 and 1898 the public debt has been multiplied six times; but the white population has nearly tripled, the exports have more than doubled, and the imports increased by 75 per cent. Moreover, of the exports at the time when the public works policy was initiated, about half were represented by gold, which now represents but a tenth of the Colony's exports. Again, the product of the workshops and factories of the Colony are now estimated at above ten millions annually, most of which is consumed in New Zealand, and therefore does not figure in the exports. The income of the bread-winners in the Colony and the wealth of the people per head, are now nearly the highest in the world. In 1870 the colonists were without the conveniences and in many cases comforts of modern civilization. They had scarcely any railways, few telegraphs, insufficient roads, bridges and harbours. Education was not universal, and the want of recreation and human society was so great as to lead notoriously to drunkenness and course debauchery. New Zealand is now a pleasant and highly civilized country. That she has become so in the last thirty years is due chiefly to the much-criticised public works policy.

Before parting with the subject of finance, it should be noted that in 1870 the Treasury was glad to borrow at slightly over five per cent.

Now it can borrow at three. The fall in the rate of private loans has been even more remarkable. Mortgagors can now borrow at five per cent.

who in 1870 might have had to pay nine. This steady fall in interest, coupled with the generally reproductive nature of the public works expenditure, should not be overlooked by those who are appalled by the magnitude of the colonial debts. For the rest, there is no repudiation party in New Zealand, nor is there likely to be any. The growth of the Colony's debt is not a matter which need give its creditors the slightest uneasiness, though no doubt it is something which the New Zealand taxpayers themselves should and will watch with the greatest care. It is quite possible that some special check will ultimately be adopted by these to ensure peculiar caution and delay in dealing with Parliamentary Loan Bills. It may be that some application of the ”referendum” may, in this particular instance, be found advisable, inasmuch as the Upper House of the New Zealand Parliament, active as it is in checking general legislation, may not amend, and in practice does not reject, loan bills.

Chapter XX

IN PARLIAMENT

”Shapes of all sorts and sizes, great and small That stood upon the floor or by the wall, And some loquacious Vessels were, and some Listened, perhaps, but never talked at all.”

When we come to look at the men as distinct from the measures of the parliament of New Zealand between 1870 and 1890, perhaps the most interesting and curious feature was the Continuous Ministry. With some approach to accuracy it may be said to have come into office in August, 1869, and to have finally expired in January, 1891. Out of twenty-one years and a half it held office for between sixteen and seventeen years. Sir Edward Stafford turned and kept it out for a month in 1872; Sir George Grey for two years, 1877-79; Sir Robert Stout for three years, 1884-7. None of the ministries which thus for longer or shorter periods supplanted it ever commanded strong majorities, or held any thorough control over the House. The Continuous Ministry was a name given to a s.h.i.+fting combination, or rather series of combinations, amongst public men, by which the cabinet was from time to time modified without being completely changed at any one moment. It might be likened to the pearly nautilus, which pa.s.ses, by gradual growth and movement, from cell to cell in slow succession; or, more prosaically, to that oft-repaired garment, which at last consisted entirely of patches. Like the nautilus, too, it had respectable sailing and floating powers. The continuous process was rather the outcome of rapidly changing conditions and personal exigencies than of any set plan or purpose. With its men its opinions and actions underwent alterations. Naturally the complete transformation which came over the Colony during the two decades between 1870 and 1890, had its effect on the point of view of colonists and their public men. The Continuous Ministry began by borrowing, and never really ceased to borrow; but its efforts at certain periods of the second of these two decades to restrict borrowing and retrench ordinary expenditure were in striking contrast to the lavishness of the years between 1872 and 1877. At its birth under Sir William Fox its sympathies were provincial and mildly democratic. It quickly quarrelled with and overthrew the Provinces, and became identified with Conservatism as that term is understood in New Zealand. From 1869 to 1872 its leaders were Fox, Vogel, and McLean. Fox left it in 1872; Major Atkinson joined it in 1874; Vogel quitted it in 1876; McLean died in 1877. Put out of office by Sir George Grey, it was for a short time led once more by Sir William Fox.

It came back again in 1879 as a Hall-Atkinson-Whitaker combination.

Hall retired in 1881, but Atkinson and Whitaker, helped by his advice, continued to direct it to the end.

Now for its opponents. Rallying under Sir George Grey in 1876, the beaten Provincialists formed a party of progress, taking the good old name of Liberal. Though Sir George had failed to save their Provinces, his eloquent exhortations rapidly revived in the House of Representatives the democratic tendencies of some of the Councils.

Hitherto any concessions to Radicalism or Collectivism made by the House had been viewed in the most easy-going fas.h.i.+on. Vogel in his earlier years had adopted the ballot, and had set up a State Life Insurance Department, which has been successfully managed, and has now about ten millions a.s.sured in it. More interesting and valuable still was his establishment of the office of Public Trustee. So well has the experiment worked, that it may be said as a plain truth that in New Zealand, the best possible Trustee, the one least subject to accidents of fortune, and most exempt from the errors which beset man's honesty and judgment, has been found by experience to be the State. The Public Trust Office of the Colony worked at first in a humble way, chiefly in taking charge of small intestate estates. Experience, however, showed its advantages so clearly, that it has now property approaching two millions' worth in its care. Any owner of property, whether he be resident in the Colony or not, wis.h.i.+ng to create a trust, may use the Public Trustee, subject, of course, to that officer's consent. Any one who desires so to do may appoint him the executor of his will. Any one about to leave, or who has left the Colony, may make him his attorney.

The Public Trustee may step in and take charge, not only of intestate estates, but of an inheritance where no executor has been named under the will, or where those named will not act. He manages and protects the property of lunatics. Where private trust estates become the cause of disputes and quarrels, between trustees and beneficiaries, the parties thereto may relieve themselves by handing over their burden to the public office. The Public Trustee never dies, never goes out of his mind, never leaves the Colony, never becomes disqualified, and never becomes that extremely disagreeable and unpleasant person--a trustee whom you do not trust. In addition to his other manifold duties he holds and administers very large areas of land reserved for the use of certain Maori tribes. These he leases to working settlers, paying over the rents to the Maori beneficiaries. Naturally, the cla.s.s which has the most cause to be grateful to the Public Trust Office is that composed of widows and orphans and other unbusinesslike inheritors of small properties, persons whose little inheritances are so often mismanaged by private trustees or wasted in law costs.

Another reform carried out by Vogel had been the adoption of the Torrens system of land transfer. Henceforth under the Land Transfer Law, Government officers did nearly all the conveyancing business of the Colony. Land t.i.tles were investigated, registered, and guaranteed, and sales and mortgages then became as simple and almost as cheap as the transfer of a parcel of shares in a company.

Even earlier the legislature had done a creditable thing in being the first in the Empire to abolish the scandal of public executions.

1877 may be accounted the birth year of more militant and systematic reform.

Grey's platform speeches in the summer of 1876-77 brought home the new Radicalism to the feelings of the ma.s.s of the electors, and to the number, then considerable, who were not electors. For the first time one of the Colony's leaders appealed to the ma.s.s of the colonists with a policy distinctly and deliberately democratic. The result was awakening. Then and subsequently Grey advocated triennial parliaments, one man one vote, a land tax, and a land policy based upon the leasing of land rather than its sale, and particularly upon a restriction of the area which any one man might acquire. The definite views of the Radicals bore fruit at once in the session of 1877. It was necessary to establish a national system of education to replace the useful, but ill-jointed work done peacemeal by the Provinces. A bill--and not a bad bill--was introduced by Mr. Charles Bowen, a gentleman honourably connected with the founding of education in Canterbury. This measure the Radicals took hold of and turned it into the free, secular, compulsory system of primary school-teaching of which the Colony is to-day justly proud, and under which the State educates thirteen-fourteenths of the children of the Colony. Now, in 1898, out of an estimated population of about 780,000 all told, some 150,000 are at school or college. Of children between ten and fifteen years of age the proportion unable to read is but o68. The annual average of attendance is much higher in New Zealand than in any of the Australian Colonies. The primary school system is excellent on its literary, not so excellent on its technical side. Nearly three-fourths of the Roman Catholic children do not take advantage of it. Their parents prefer to support the schools of their church, though without State aid of any kind. These, and a proportion of the children of the wealthier, are the only exceptions to the general use made of the public schools. It is not likely that any change, either in the direction of teaching religion in these, or granting money to church schools, will be made.

Each political party in turn is only too eager to charge the other with tampering with the National system--a sin, the bare hint of which is like suspicion of witchcraft or heresy in the Middle Ages.

Grey gained office in 1877, but with a majority too small to enable him to carry his measures. Ballance, his treasurer, did indeed carry a tax upon land values. But its chief result at the time was to alarm and exasperate owners of land, and to league them against the Radicals, who after a not very brilliant experience of office without power fell in 1879. Thereafter, so utterly had Grey's angry followers lost faith in his generals.h.i.+p, that they deposed him--a humiliation which it could be wished they had seen their way to forego, or he to forgive. Yet he was, it must be confessed, a very trying leader. His cloudy eloquence would not do for human nature's daily food. His opponents, Atkinson and Hall, had not a t.i.the of his emotional power, but their facts and figures riddled his fine speeches. Stout and Ballance, lieutenants of talent and character, became estranged from him; others of his friends were enough to have d.a.m.ned any government.

The leader of a colonial party must have certain qualities which Sir George Grey did not possess. He may dispense with eloquence, but must be a debater; whether able or not able to rouse public meetings, he must know how to conduct wearisome and complicated business by discussion; he must not only have a grasp of great principles, but readiness to devote himself to the mastery of uninteresting minds and unappetizing details; above all, he must be generous and considerate to lieutenants who have their own views and their own followers, and who expect to have their full share of credit and influence. In one word, he should be what Ballance was and Grey was not. Nevertheless, one of Grey's courage, talent, and prestige was not likely to fail to leave his mark upon the politics of the country; nor did he. Though he failed to pa.s.s the reforms just mentioned, he had the satisfaction of seeing them adopted and carried into law, some by his opponents, some by his friends. Only one of his pet proposals seems to have been altogether lost sight of, his oft-repeated demand that the Governor of the Colony should be elected by the people.

The Grey Ministry had committed what in a Colonial Cabinet is the one unpardonable crime--it had encountered a commercial depression, with its concomitant, a shrunken revenue. When Hall and Atkinson succeeded Grey with a mission to abolish the land-tax, they had at once to impose a different but more severe burden. They also reduced--for a time--the cost of the public departments by the rough-and-ready method of knocking ten per cent. off all salaries and wages paid by the treasury, a method which, applied as it was at first equally to low and high, had the unpopularity as well as the simplicity of the poll-tax. That retrenchment and fresh taxation were unpleasant necessities, and that Hall and Atkinson more than once tackled the disagreeable task of applying them, remains true and to their credit.

Between 1880 and 1890 the colonists were for the most part resolutely at work adapting themselves to the new order of things--to lower prices and slower progress. They increased their output of wool and coal--the latter a compensation for the falling-off of the gold. They found in frozen meat an export larger and more profitable than wheat.

Later on they began, with marked success, to organize co-operative dairy factories and send cheese and b.u.t.ter to England. Public affairs during the decade resolved themselves chiefly into a series of expedients for filling the treasury and carrying on the work of land settlement. Borrowing went on, but more and more slowly. Times did not soon get better.

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