WELLINGTON.

Evening Star, Issue 4130, 23 May 1876, Page 4

WELLINGTON.

(From, our own Correspondent, .)

May 19.

*fhere are two great trades just now being carried on in Wellington. They seem to have sprung up much about the same time, and very likely they will run the same length of race, and then collapse from exhaustion. I refer to the buying up of publichouses and the craving after what is vulgarly known as Government “billets.” Both trades, as a matter of course, are confined to select ' circles with which the general public do not intermeddle. The baying up of publichouses arose from the announcement one day that a brewing firm had obtained the lease and goodwill of a certain thriving hostelry, when straightway every brewer and spirit merchant in town set out—in some cases singly, more often in couples—to hunt for publichouse property, which naturally rose with the demand till a lucky Boniface, here and there, has actually lighted on a small fortune on retiring from the bar. Billet-seeking is brisk, and very wonderful in its developments. An outsider, who be- ■ lieves in honest trade and honest labor, smiles with the slightest tinge of contempt at what he sees and hears around him. The Tapers and Tadpoles are naturally in a state of great excitement. You may see them running about the streets, seizing listeners by the button and holding them by their glittering eye. They knew how things would be. C could not come in because I) was in favor of B, but D himself had no . chance because B was up to his little game. If B had got in, G would have been sure of that snug little arrangement which P had lost, but T would have made it straight with A, and F would have lost the pickings he has enjoyed so long. • About the new “billet”—ah, don’t they know a thing sr two about that! And so on, ad nauseam. One really pities the poor wretches who are ever waiting and watching in this way for any crumb or crust of patronage which perchance may fall to those who are not ready to execute the small movements which it does not suit the principals themselves to . perform. “A wise man,” Bacon has told us, “will not judge the whole play by one act,” and the friends of the Government do not judge them by their present system of bestowing favors; but it is impossible to shut one’s eyes to the fact that it is losing them the prestige they lately enjoyed. There is absolutely no principle—no question of fitness—in the appointments they are making. It is a system of indirect bribery, leading to a sort of party fusion which is certain to result in ultimate confusion. The nomination of Mr Fitzher- ■ bert to the Speakership has been excused on the ground that it was getting rid of a garrulous old man, whose speech was a per Setnal sneer; but what shall be said of the esire to replace Mr Gisborne on the Civil list, after having had his hand in the public purse until he has retired with a pension, and who only a few months ago shook off the du»t of Wellington from his feet because the citizens would not have him either for Mayor or member, and was prepared, like another Ulysses, “to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars ?” Worse still, if not more bewildering, is the determination to make a place in the Government for Mr Bunny (which is the latest' on dit), whose antecedents need not here be referred to. The Minister of Justice, we are told, stoutly opposes this proposal, and even goes the length of saying that he will not sit in the Cabinet with such a man. If so, an Under-Secretaryship will likely be created for this hanger-on—a fine, example of how virtue is rewarded in this Colony ! I am sure friends of the Government in Otago will not believe it till the thing is done. Let us hope the scandal may be averted.