The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prevalebit. THURSDAY, JULY 8, 1886. Civil Service Reform Bill.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1283, 8 July 1886, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prevalebit. THURSDAY, JULY 8, 1886. Civil Service Reform Bill.

The second reading of the Civil Service Reform Bill, a measure to which we have already referred at considerable length, was carried by a substantial majority in the House of Representatives at an early hour this morning. The ' debate, however, which preceded the division leads us to believe that the Bill wid either be very materially amended in Committee or rejected upon the motion for the third reading. The Premier last night entered upon an elaborate defence of the proposal to have the civil servants nominated by the members of the House of Representatives, but his special pleading was singularly weak and we should think he utterly failed to satisfy a single member that the system proposed would not bring about corruption and inconvenience. He said it was generally admitted that the naval officers of the United States were the finest officers in the world, and they were nominated to the service by the House of Representatives of the United States. The result was that the officers were obtained from all parts of the States. For ourselves we are by no means prepared to admit that the naval officers of the United States are superior to those of Great Britain, but even were this the case it would not follow that the method by which appointments are made in America is more likely to produce good results than the method prevailing in Great Britain and this colony. Patronage, in its most objectionable form, is the very corner stone of the United States Civil Service system, and if Sir Robert Stout had followed his argument to its legitimate end, he would have urged that dismissals, not only appointments, should rest with individual members of | the House. The proposal to periodically adjust the salaries ot civil servants to the cost of living has been made the subject of a good deal of ridicule, and is, no doubt, open to very grave objection, but we believe it to be an honest attempt to economise, to reduce our enormous Civil List expenditure, and so far has

our cordial sympathy. But while we credit the Premier with a sincere desire to grapple with this difficult question, we think he proposes to commence at the wrong end. It is the number oi civil servants, not generally, the amounts of their salaries, that should be reduced. Many public officers are earning their salaries over and over again and it would be monstrous to withhold any part of the very moderate remuneration granted to these gentlemen because potatoes were a drug in the market or groceries were cheapened by over-importation. On the other hand there are scores of Government employees who are drawing salaries for merely nominal services, services which could either be entirely dispensed with or better performed by some clerk whose time at present is not fully occupied. We fear the Bill now before the House would not, even were it passed, remove the abuses of the Service, but we trust its introduction will direct more serious attention to th absolute need fot reform.