Civil and Military Gazette Column, January 11 1886
Sir Auckland Colvin goes at great length into the question of the Famine Insurance Fund; and he makes merry at the expense of those critics (to some extent we think they must be the creation of his imagination) who will not be convinced: those whom he playfully describes "as the herd of such, who think too little and who talk too much." He has certainly abolished his enemies, whether they are, as we believe, phantoms conjured up for this purpose, or real flesh and blood critics. Of course, there never was such a thing as a Famine Insurance Fund, and it never was intended to employ the additional taxation imposed for the purpose of famine insurance for the establishment of a fund to be set apart from the general revenues and employed exclusively for famine purposes. From the first, Government refused to bind itself and its successors to appropriate income raised by the direct taxation imposed in 1878 for the formation of such a fund, apart from the general revenue. It scarcely required, at the present hour, the expenditure of such and amount of eloquence on the part of Sir Auckland to convince the public on this point.
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