DAYS OF TRIAL 319 



been that they lacked courage to reduce the expenditure. It was 

 notorious that, while borrowing was possible, Ministers were afraid 

 to offend the democracy by temporarily suspending public works, 

 or even unprofitable railway construction. The new Ministers, 

 while Parliament was yet reverberating with their denunciations of 

 Mr. Shiels, were equally paralysed when they clambered on to the 

 Treasury benches. The London capitalist had apparently closed 

 his doors, but Mr. Carter promptly appealed to the local market 

 and raised a loan of 750,000 on Treasury bills, just a few days 

 before the bank suspensions, and with this credit in hand the Govern- 

 ment at once proceeded with much avoidable expenditure. Yet the 

 position was truly alarming and demanded drastic action. For the 

 year ending 30th June, 1893, the public revenue was 6,960,000 ; 

 the expenditure was 7,990,000, and this huge deficit, augmented 

 each year up to 1896, brought out by that date an accumulation of 

 unfunded debt amounting to 2,650,000. Proposals for an income 

 tax were rejected, and during the twenty-one months of the existence 

 of the Patterson Ministry the main efforts of his Government were 

 directed towards retrenchment in the public expenditure. The fall- 

 ing revenue, however, kept pace with the savings, and the total deficit 

 continued to accumulate, though the rapidity of its growth was 

 checked. While unable to restore financial equilibrium, Sir James 

 Patterson's retrenchment policy reduced the deficit of over 1,000,000 

 in 1893 to one of 590,000 in 1894. Practically the whole of this 

 saving was effected in salaries and wages in the Civil Service and 

 Eailway Department, and it not unreasonably evoked a strong feel- 

 ing of hostility amongst those who considered themselves unfairly 

 singled out to pay the penalty of universal extravagance. It came 

 upon them at a time when hundreds were groaning under the burden 

 of calls in failed or reconstructed companies, and when most of the 

 thrifty among the wage-earners were lamenting the locking up of 

 their savings in unproductive enterprises. No doubt the service 

 was greatly overmanned and certainly contained a number whose 

 perfunctory duties were performed at a cost out of all proportion to 

 their value. But an equitable weeding of the service and readjust- 

 ment of duties on a business-like footing required not only time, but 

 a capable and thoroughly independent man, or body of men, which 



