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1877. NEW ZEALAND.

NEW ZEALAND STATISTICS IN "WESTGARTH'S CIRCULAR" (CORRESPONDENCE RELATING TO).

Presented to both Souses of the Assembly by command of Sis Excellency.

No. 1. The Hon. the Colonial Treasurer to the Agent-General. Sir, — Treasury, Wellington, 12th January, 1877. I have the honor to enclose to you a copy, received by last mail, of tho Circular issued periodically by Mr. Westgarth, of 18, Cornhill, London, and to call your attention to the trade and revenue returns of the Australasian Colonies as therein set forth. Tou will at once perceive that the amount which is there stated as the revenue of this colony for the year 1876, is really the revenue of the General Government for the financial year 1873-74. I enclose also a copy of the same Circular issued under date the 27th November, 1874, in which you will observe that the revenue of this colony is stated at the same amount as in the latest publication : in other words, for a period of two years the same figures have been continuously repeated as the revenue of New Zealand, notwirhstanding that a copy of the Financial Statement, in which the revenue year by year is plainly stated, has been regularly supplied to Mr. Westgarth, and that the colony has an Agent in London, at whose office the latest information on such a point might at once have been obtained. lam moreover under the impression that, during your stay in London in 1575, you called attention to the improper quotation of tho same figures (£1,420,216) as the revenue of the year 1874-75, either in Mr. Westgarth's Circular or in some other like publication. I need not point out to you the injury done to the colony by the continued publication of inaccuracies of this kind, in a document which claims to be an authority on the subject of which it treats. I presume that it is entirely through oversight that the old and therefore misleading figures have been retained in the Circular ; and I do not doubt that, upon a representation from you, Mr. Westgarth ■will, as far as he can, remedy the wrong done. He should, I think, be requested irot only to publish, at the earliest moment possible, the correct figures, but also, by a note or other special reference, to explain that the figures which have so long appeared in the Circular have not at all represented the real revenue of the colony. I have, &c., Sir J. Arogel, K.C.M.G., Agent-General, &c. H. A. Atkinson.

No. 2. The Hon. the Colonial Treasurer to the Agent-General. Sir,— Treasury, Wellington, 27th March, 1877. By my letter, No. 9, of January 12th. I directed your attention to the statistics published in " Westparth's Circular," under the head " Australasian Colonies," and I requested that you would point out to Mr. Westgarth the injustice he was, no doubt unintentionally, doing to New Zealand by publishing, as the colonial revenue for 1876, the figures representing only the revenue of the General Government for the financial year 1573-74. 2. " Westgarth's Circular," dated January, 1577, has now been received. 8. A table therein states the revenue of New Zealand for 1875 as £1,677,G26 ; and that of Victoria as £4,236,423. I quote the latter because, by the mail which brought the Circular, I received a copy of the " Statist ioal Register ot* the Colony of Victoria," for 1875; and I am thus enabled to show what the figures for New Zealand should have been as against those given for Victoria.