1885.] the Taxation of the Cape Colony. 47 



tlie interest on our liabilities. The effect whicli our wars have had on 

 the Colonial Exchequer is easily estimated from a brief statement of 

 the figures involved. Ten years ago, the debt, including the money 

 raised for local bodies under the guarantee of the general Grovern- 

 ment, stood at £2,484,000 — rather less than 2^ millioi/3. At the end 

 of 1884 it stood at £20,804,000 or nearly 21 millions, in other words, 

 during ten years the sum of 18 millions sterling has been added to the 

 purchasing power of the country during that period by means of 

 borrowed money — and when it is added that more than half of this 

 amount, or £9,400,000, was raised and expended between 1880 and 

 1884, in four years, it will aiford no matter for surprise that the 

 cessation of this adventitious aid should create a wide-felt economical 

 disturbance. In connection with the expenditure of this money 

 another point deserves notice. As is well known, the greater portion 

 of our loans has been contracted for expenditure in the construction of 

 our railways. Valuable, nay, indispensable as these means of commu- 

 nication are to a Colony like ours, their completion has effected a great 

 revolution in the distribution of wealth and of purchasing power in 

 the country. We know that a sum of more than one million sterling 

 is now collected as railway revenue, for carriage of goods and passen- 

 gers ; and even allowing for the natural increase arising from the 

 improvement and the regularity of transit, it is possible that a sum 

 not far short of this amount, which used to be paid for carriage and 

 bullock-wagon, and the purchase of oxen, horses, mules and forage, 

 has been diverted from the pockets of the farming community. No 

 one will dream of putting forward the construction of railways as a 

 matter of regret, or of undervaluing the great part which they will 

 play in the development of the country ; but, in estimating the causes 

 of depression, it is necessary to take into account the transference 

 of this large sum from a certain class of the agricultural community 

 who find their purchasing power seriously reduced. The consumer 

 benefits but for a time, and, until matters have adjusted themselves, 

 there is a most undoubted pinch, to say nothing of the change in the 

 mode of business, arising out of regular and rapid communication, 

 which has also caused a disturbance in the older centres of trade. 

 Added to the causes of depression, arising out of the increased 

 burdens on the Colonial Exchequer, the cessation of the influx of 

 borrowed capital, and the transference of purchasing power from a 

 large class of the community, we have the very serious and general 

 fall in every staple product of colonial export. There is no need to 

 enlarge on this painful subject, which is only too well known to all of 

 you. Any one of the causes mentioned would, pending the restoration 

 of an equilibrium, have caused serious inconvenience and distress ; 

 but when all of them have come together "in battalions," it is no 

 wonder that the finances of the Colony, both public and private, have 

 been deranged, and that a crisis has supervened at least as severe as 

 those which similar causes have produced at former times in other 

 communities. 



It is now, when the necessity for meeting the public burdens calls 

 for sacrifices from every section of the community, that criticisms may 

 be usefully employed in drawing attention to a subject of which 

 everyone must allow the importance, in the hope that examination 

 and study may result in an apportionment of the public burdens in a 

 manner as little disadvantageous as possible to the general interests 



VOL. IV. o 



