The reform most needed in the interest of agriculturists and others is to put an effectual check upon the extravagance and ostentation of Local Boards and District Councils, and to see that they spend no more money in any one year than they can raise in their districts. These bodies are now obliged to submit their accounts to a proper audit and to publish them, and it is hoped that the ratepayer will subject them to close criticism.
The policy of allowing persons who are elected for three years to raise loans and plunge a district into debt for a period of thirty years without one iota of personal responsibility is obviously dangerous. To allow reckless borrowing for the construction of works which are a source of expense and waste, and never of profit, would be called madness in private life.
Doubtless a seat on a Council which borrows money in lots of 100,000l. at a time affords a delightful amusement to the idle man, the busybody, the faddist, the philanthropist with a mission for fumbling in other persons' pockets, and the prophet who is ever anxious to borrow in order to provide for the future of which he is ignorant. Your prophet is the most dangerous of these persons, and instances will occur to the minds of most of us of municipalities which have been half ruined by over-sanguine persons endowed with speculative minds and persuasive tongues. The risk run by these persons is so small, be it remembered, that if an aggrieved ratepayer makes them defendants in an action, they enjoy the unique privilege of paying part of their costs and damages out of the successful plaintiff's pockets.
Most of the local borrowing in this country has been for works of sewerage, and although such works are financially ruinous, we are told that we get a dividend of 'Health.' This, however, is not true, and nobody could expect health to emerge from a system of which putrefaction and overcrowding are the chief characteristics.
The application of organic matter to well-tilled soil leads to positive gain and definite increase. The soil is the only permanent source of wealth in this world. And we are all of us absolutely dependent upon it for existence and happiness. The soil, if properly tilled, provides health as well as wealth, and be it remembered that in proportion to its productiveness so is the need of labour; and further, be it remembered that long after the eye is too dim and the hand too slow to keep time with steam machinery, the physical powers are amply sufficient for the cultivation of the land.
Many of our pressing social problems are inextricably linked with our duty to the soil, and any country in which the fertility of the soil does not increase cannot be rightly regarded as really in the van of civilisation and scientific progress. We are probably the wealthiest country on the globe, because for some time past we have been the hub of the entire financial world. Our success in one direction is no excuse for neglecting the more certain sources of wealth, and it is to be hoped that it will soon be regarded as evidence of neglect of our moral obligations to allow the land to drift out of cultivation.