The Globe. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 1874.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 57, 5 August 1874, Page 2

The Globe. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 1874.

The members of the Lyttelton Borough Council do not seem to be a very competent body of men. It appears that some of them were not satisfied at the way in which the bocks of the Council had been kept, and consequently some time ago, it was agreed that they should be examined by a professional accountant. This was done, and a certain deficiency was found to exist. The clerk was then requested to resign, which he did, and the Council advertisedthat applications could be made for the place in question. This appointment seems to hare been eagerly sought for in Lyttelton, as we were informed some time ago that it was applied for by the Mayor for the time being, who was willing to resigu his office, in order that he might occupy the less honorable, but more lucrative situation of clerk to the Council. But the councillors of the borough of Lyttelton, in their wisdom, overlooked one important fact when they elected a gentleman to fill this position of trust; they entirely forgot to enforce a clause in the Municipal Corporations Act, which rendered it necessary that the incoming clerk should find securities. The gentleman who was elected to fill the post, therefore, did not find any, and tlie consequence is, that we believe the Council will have to suffer to the amount of the deficiency we have alluded to. We must be distinctly understood to imply no dishonesty to the clerk in question, as this was the opinion of the Council themselves; but we are bound to say, that the whole proceedings must have been carried out in a manner that reflects very little credit on the gentlemen elected by the ratepayers of Lyttelton, to look after their interests and those of the town generally. The present Mayor tried to prove that; the Mayor who was in office at the time of the election of the cleric, was responsible for the amount missing, but surely every member of the Council at the same time was equally culpable, and the amount of the loss, should with equal propriety, bo charged amongst all those who were instrumental in making the appointment, which has turned out so disastrously. The Mayor uttered a very truthful explanation of the affair, when ho declared, that too many of the councillors were satistied with a merely honorary discharge of their duties, and the occurrence which lias just taken place, shows some of the councillors of Lyttelton to have been strangely negligent. 'Surely amongst the whole body of couuciilors, there must have been some one, or other, who had perused the Municipal Corporations! Act, and they cannot all have been ignorant of the fact that sureties ought to have been demanded, from the gentleman they selected to fill the office of clerk. The present Mayor, we presume, could not have been a councillor at this time, as he moved a resolution, at the last meeting of the Council, to the effect that that body considered that the Mayor at the time of the appointment, had grossly neglected the public interest in omitting to take securities from tlio clerk selected. VVe conclude, however, that the other

councillors felt that they had been equally to blame, and consequently the motion lapsed for want of a seconder. The whole proceedings show what a farce the administration of borough matters must be in some towns, and we have no doubt that this case is comparatively a very trilling oue to many, that might bo raised up by any reader of the proceedings of the various Councils in the towns of Canterbury.