Ashburton Guardian MAGNA EST VERITAS ET PRÆVALEBIT THURSDAY, JULY 6, 1893. THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 3018, 6 July 1893, Page 2

Ashburton Guardian MAGNA EST VERITAS ET PRÆVALEBIT THURSDAY, JULY 6, 1893. THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

—■■ • — The Financial Statement delivered on Tuesday evening by the Hon J G. Ward, successor to the late Mi Ballance in the Colonial Treasurership, is a document far different in character from the Statements we have been accustomed to. In previous years the the annual Financial Statement has been demoted almost wholly to figures —figures usually showing very clearly a not very cheering financial position ; figures showing not very clearly how that position had been attained; figures indicating mistily how a better state of things might be brought about; figures that played leap frog over each other to the end of the long rigmarole until the reader laid down his paper, if he had retained power of concentration sufficiently to reach the end, with a feeling that, as a reward for industrious reading of a dry subject, he left it as wise as when he began. The Statement of Mr Ward has plenty of figures; but they are so arranged as to show clearly to the popular mind how the colony stands, and one point of difference in this from previous Statements is the fact that a balance to credit of over half a million is shown. No previous Statement ever showed anything like that. This Statement does not confine itself to figures, and there is a difference in this, too, from its predecessors. The Statement of Mr Ward deals with many things that are not matters of finance, and really do not come within the recognised scope of the Budget. Of course every man has his own way of telling a story or making a statement. Some, men can say all they need to say in a very few words, conveying their ideas in a sentence or two; others are as tedious as a gossipping old woman, and require to cover acres of paper before they have satisfied themselves that they have got everything off their minds they wished to say, and dance round and round their subject, touching upon all sorts of irrelevant things by the way, We take the liberty of thinking that Mr Ward might very well have left fully four columns of the nine his lull Statement fills to the heads of the departments on whose ground he trenches. The columns ofjjmatter devoted to the native land question; to agricultural matters, with the output of butter figures, and the jubilate over the freedom of the colony from scab; to the labor question; to the telegraph and postal services ; to the Cheviot estate, etc., might very wel\ have been left to be dealt with at a future time* and by other hands. Mr Ward has beeu very prolix indeed, but out of that prolixity has come much information of what Government intend to do, and the .Statement has thus been made use of in a minor way to outline the policy of the party in power. Much was made by the Opposition of the question of taxing improvements, The Colonial Treasurer has settled this question by announcing his intention of freeing all improvements from taxation, and to make good the loss therefrom by imposing an extra sixth of a penny graduated land tax on properties over £10,000. This he estimates will yield another £19,000. He further proposes to save £20,000 in two years by abolishing the triennial assessment with its accompanying cost, and the extra revenue from graduated land tax along with this saving would nearly make up the £37,000 surrendered by relieving tho improvements from taxation. But the Statement is disappointing in one particular. With a surplus of half a million in the chest, with platform cries and cries from the people about crushing taxation, one would have thought the Customs tariff might have been eased off a little J but the Government in their wisdom think it "kdvisable to maintain a strong finance, and thus enable those requiring work to be well employed." So to maintain a strong finance and find work for those who have none, a quarter of a million will be placed to the credit of the public works fund instead of being devoted to lightening the burden of indirect taxation. The Government intend apparently to redeem the promise made in the Governor's speech, to grapple with the native land question, and legislation in the direction of rating native land in the same way that the land of Euro-, peans is rated is to be initiated, as well as proposals brought down forf providing for the settlement of native reserves. The nature of the latter proposals is not indicated, but from what was forecast in the Speech from the Throne and the short, crisp intimar tion in the Statement itself, it is evident that Government feel some decree of confidence in the measure they purpose introducing. ThejStatement, aa has been said, ranges over many subjects, of which we shall doubtless hear more anon, so that reference to many of them here is 1 unnecessary, but Mr Ward may be congratulated on his maiden Budget, if for nothing but the " strong finance " of the colony which it discloses in the oh»pe t of a full wallet,