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Cromwell Argus, Volume 2, Issue 89, 25 July 1871, Page 4

Hypocrisy and cant are failings which, vr u greater or less extent, pervade nearly all legislative bodies ; but certainly the Provincial. Council will from henceforth be looked upon as possessing amongst its members some who have arrived at the superlative degree of perfection in respect of these contemptible traits in a man's character. During the whole of the session ojf the Council which Kan juet con-

eluded, there has been one continual cry of retrenchment, and the pruning knife has been applied unmercifully, and iu many instances, we regret to say, without discretion. Under-clerks, who do the principal part of the work for which their chiefs get all the credit and the lion's share of the pay ; policemen, whose salaries are

actually cut down to the rate paid to ordinary labourers; messengers, who are hadly enough remunerated as it is, and frjvho can ill afford to have anything taken Y)ff their salaries ; yea, even the nurses at (, x ie Hospital, we learn, —have been spotted as fair game for the political pruning knife, and have besn obliged to submit to such reductions in their wages as our sapient legislators in their wisdom deemed necessary. Certainly, a few of the higher civil service employes have suffered ; but in these instances the reductions have not been made in the proportion that justice would dictate ; while many who are receiving really outrageously large salaries for the work they are supposed to perform, have been left unmolested. Tt seems to be a recognised thing in these retrenchment movements that the humbler dependants upon Government bounty should suffer, no matter whether those who can better afford it do so or not. Here, then, is just cause for complaint. But it is nothing when compared with the shameless effrontery of honourable members when dealing with the cpiestion of their own pay. Their action on this particular question shows the utter hollowness and falsity of their expressed opinions on the matter of retrenchment. It will no doubt be generally imagined that honourable members who have been so loudly crying out for retrenchment in departmental and other expenditure, would have been only too hippy to let the world see that they were not animated by any selfish feelings ; and that, in order to assist the Province as much as possible in her hour of need, they would eagerly have embraced any chance which would have enabled them to do so, even at the cost of a little self-sacrifice. But no ; the moment tMr pockets are in danger of suffering, all thoughts of retrenchment vanish. Our readers will no doubt remember that during the early part of the session, when a full Council was present, the rate of pay country members were to receive was fixed at fifteen shillings per diem ; and for town members ten shillings per diem was allowed. This sadly disagreed with the notions of certain sordid spirits in the Council, who were clamorous for their pound a day; and as the session drew on, advantage was taken of a very thin House to introduce a Bill fixing the amount at "not more than twenty shillings a day." When the Supplementary Estimates were transmitted by His Honor the Superintendent, the item, " Expanses of Members—country, fifteen shillings, and' town ten shillings, per diem,— £1000," came on for discussion in due source ; and after a series of amendments on a motion proposed by Mr Duncan- that the item should stand " Expenses of Members—country, fifteen, and town ten shillings, per diem," it was eventually carried on a division by fifteen votes to eight that the item should stand "country members, nineteen shillings and eleven pence, and town members, ten shillings, per diem." The division list we give in another column. Thus the resolution previously passed by the Council, — and that, too, when the Province was fully represented by its members,—was rendered nugatory. We cannot find language sufficiently strong to express our condemnation of the underhand means which those members who voted against Mr Duncan's motion adopted in order to carry their point. It is one of the meanest transactions that the records of the Otago Provincial Council will bear witness to, and is disgraceful in the extreme to those honourable members who had such a want of philanthropy as to sacrifice the interests of the Province to their own personal aggrandisement. We regret to observe that the name of our local member, Mr HroKEY, is to be found on the wrong side of the division list,