The Evening Star FRIDAY, MAY 20, 1870.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2195, 20 May 1870, Page 2

The Evening Star FRIDAY, MAY 20, 1870.

In the absense of ability to appropriate revenue for any great purpose, our Provincial Council amuse themselves by squabbling over the salaries in the 'different working members of the Government employ. This is eminently democratic. The Council must do something for their money, and few of them have any notion of the duties of the various officials who carry out their behests. They seem to think that the wages of a mechanic or farm-laborer ought to satisfy men of education, and that clear heads and well-trained brains are worth no more than strong thews and sinews. From the Superintendent downwards, Executive officers are therefore subjected year by year to undergo the crucifixion of having the value of their services canvassed, and to run the risk of having their narrow incomes out down. There is really nothing more disgusting than to have to undergo the torture of such uncertainty, yet it is one of the privileges of vulgar ignorance, to undervalue services that those who sit in judgment upon them ■cannot comprehend. We have heard a number of rough and ready theologians, whose notions of religion are of the •crudest sort, set up for judges of the doctrine preached by a minister whom they paid ostensibly to leach them, and

in pride of purse declare that he should have no more of their money. Such an idea as their being unable to pronounce a correct opinion, through scarcely being able, intelligently, to connect two ideas, never entered their heads. They were free born Britons, who inherited the right of private judgment, and the doctrine taught did not suit their notions ; so they were not going to pay a man, who, although trained in thought, learned in language, and correct in deportment, held such heterodox ideas. So the pew judges the pulpit, and in like spirit our Provincial Council sets a value upon educated service. There cannot be a more unpleasant position than the servant of a Council, the majority of whom boast of having become rich by their own hand labor. Accustomed merely to bodily toil, they cannot comprehend the more wearying eil’ects of mental training. Their life has partaken more of animal enjoyment. They have risen in the morning and gone to their daily labor—they have enjoyed their food, and their work has prepared them for rest. Their lives have been passed comparatively without cai’e or responsibility, and that independence of which many of them can boast, has not been gained so much through their own exertions, as it has tumbled upon them through unexpected circumstances. But if their lives depended upon it, they could not fulfil the duties required of a junior clerk in the Provincial sendee, though they seem to think that those gentlemen are fair sport to be tormented every session —just as boys torture a worm in trying to catch a minnow. If the offices which those gentlemen fill, who are thus made the playthings of the Provincial Council, are necessary to the service, the officer should be well paid, and there should be some certainty connected with it. The sense of insecurity has a tendency to destroy that interest in the fulfilment of duty which is necessary to cheerful and efficient service. If the salary is email, men of talent will not accept the office. There is not a man in full health of body and mind, although a bachelor of arts, if unmarried, who would not ten times sooner compete with an agricultural laborer or a shepherd for his work, or break stones on the road, than starve on wages that would not enable him to maintain the standing in so.ciety that is expected of those in official positions. And what can be more hollow than Tor a person to make such a fuss about introducing immigrants, .and to niter long philanthropic tirades about iha comforts of the laboring classes, and the provision that should be made for settling an agricultural laborer on the land, in order that he may become rich and independent, when in the next breath he would reduce the remuneration of the man who is responsible for doing the work of the public ? There is no cant more intolerable than the cant of economy when it takes the shape of cutting down official salaries. It is never honest. It is the mere vulgar clap-trap stylo of commending a representative’s watchfulness over the public funds. When he faces his constituents on the hustings he has something to say for his honorarium. If there are useless offices, let them he abolished, jThere ought to he no waste in the public service any more than in private establishments. But if the Government are to have efficient servants, let them feel not only that their services are appreciated, but that so long as their duties are performed and their responsibilities are fulfilled, their position js secure and their salaries unaltered, Wjth such miserable tampering as has been attempted, no man can regulate his expenditure if dependent upon his official income. As for provision for the future, a vote of the Council may vender it impossible. The only temptation to enter the service its respectability and the prospect of permanency, movc these, and it is at once reduced to a refuge for the destitute, for none others will accept service under it. Let there be no more officers than the service requires ; but in order to have the work done well and cheaply, able men should be secured by being sufficiently paid. The laborer is worthy of his hire.