26 SEPTEMBER 1874, Page 3

The Pall Mall Gazette of Wednesday evening publishes an animated,

but not, we venture to think, quite well founded or reasoned, attack on the financial administration of New Zealand, by a gentleman who has been for the last six years resi- dent in the colony. Mr. Fellows'a main objection is that New Zealand owes about twice as much, in proportion, per head as Great Britain, and that many of her public works, her railroads especially, do not as yet pay anything like an adequate return for the expenditure upon them. Several English railroads, connecting large centres of population, are unhappily in the same condition ; and it is rather soon to expect New Zealand railroads, which have been constructed by the State, not in ex- pectation of dividend, but to open up its territory and attract population, to be directly productive. The same remark applies to docks and other public works, which are built, not with a view to the present population of the colony, but to that which, sit its present extraordinary rate of progress, it is certain to attain in the course of another generation. No one, we think, can read the very masterly and carefully-verified financial statement of Mr. Vogel in introducing this year's Budget, without feeling that the financial position of New Zealand is tolerably sound, and has for the last three years been not merely steadily, but rapidly improving.