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Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XII, Issue 816, 11 January 1868, Page 2

We did not intend to say a word farther about the Town Board accounts for some time, —not, indeed, until the report of the present auditors had been submitted to the rate-payers, but our contemporary has got into such a mournful fog— lost himself

so hopelessly in a maze of figures, of which he seems unable either to make beginning, end, or middle—that we cannot help reverting briefly to the subject. When Mr Soulby, auditor No. 1, asserted, at the rate-payers’ meeting, that according to the treasury books, Mr Field had paid several thousand pounds (it must have been some large sum like that, although nobody was able to follow our friend) to the Town Board’3 credit without crediting himself with the payments in the Board’s accounts, every sensible person present felt that he was making his case ridiculous. So long as he contented himself with hinting that £SO might have slipped into the clerk’s and £7O into the chairman’s pocket, the thing seemed possible ; but to assert that a gentleman had paid thousands of pounds to the Board’s credit, without making entries to show he himself was no longer liable for the money, was simply absurd. Our contemporary, in his columns on Thursday, is guilty of a similar absurdity in trying to make it appear that the Board takes credit for paying to the Provincial Treasury only about half of what it really does pay. Had the charge been the very opposite, there might be reason for suspecting something wrong, but as it stands any thinking man must see that Mr Taylor, auditor No. 2, has only found a mare’s-nest. Owing to the financial years of the Provincial Government and the Town Board terminating at different dates (March and October) it is difficult to check the two accounts, so as to show that they precisely correspond, but a reference to the Board’s balance sheet, for the first of the years quoted by Mr Taylor, shows that the apparent discrepancy arises from his taking as the total rates and contributions for tlie year only a portion of them —that portion (£521 9s 9d) which was derived from the general rate account, while he omits altogether £568 2s 6d more, which appears in ten special rate accounts immediately following it. Correct the auditor’s or editor’s mistake and the discrepancy vanishes at once. If any rate-payer has the curiosity to verify this fact, he need only turn to the Town Board’s balance sheet for the year referred to. And the same remarks apply with equal accuracy to the accounts of the following years to which allusion is made. Mr Hutchison examined the accounts much more minutely than either auditors One or Two. He is not in the habit of saying he has audited accounts when he has not done so, and he would never think of saying that he had found accounts correct to-day and then turn round to-morrow and say they were incorrect. The quibble about the £7O is equally or even more absurd. The Board never disputed its liability to account for the money, but on the contrary shows it as part of a far larger sum which has still to be accounted for in the same account. The remarks about cash and balances are simply nonsense, for there is nn n»<j of putting too fine a point upon it. Suppose a case, for we would like to make the matter plain if we could. Suppose a tradesman’s books show him to be largely indebted to the merchants who supply him with goods, is he therefore bound to keep a sum of money lying idle at his banker’s sufficient to pay the several debts ? Perhaps auditors One and Two would act in this way, but men in business do not. Our tradesman’s ledger clearly proves that his customers are indebted to him in far more than he owes, and so long as he gathers in the money due to him in time to meet the bills to the merchants as they come to maturity, no one has any right to blame him for keeping idle in the bank merely sufficient to pay current demands. It is the same, as we understand it, with the Board. The Provincial Treasury is the Board’s bank, and as the balance sheet shows moneys owing to the Board, on the several street accounts, more than sufficient to cover what is indebted to the general rate account (including the Cemetery money, the wonderful £7O of which auditor No. 2 can find no trace, but which auditor No. 1 never missed), so long as the Board collects the street debts in time to meet the necessary payments on the general rate account, the fact that the actual cash balance in the Treasury is a small one is a matter of no earthly consequence to the rate-payers. The whole argument of our contemporary, if we may call it argument, in fact proves either that he knows nothing of business matters, which is likely enough, or that he is trying to mislead the public, which is also but too probable. He will not, however, succeed. His procedure reminds us (if he will pardon us the use of a very homely illustration) of an incident in a large public library. A noisy brainless fellow was complaining of the dirty state in which the librarian kept the books, and he commenced dusting them. “Stop, stop, you blockhead,” said the librarian drily, “the dirt is the only part of them that will stick to you.”