The Globe. FRIDAY, MARCH 31, 1876.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 557, 31 March 1876, Page 2

The Globe. FRIDAY, MARCH 31, 1876.

It was announced a few days ago that three distinguished Civil Servants had been appointed to visit the different provinces for the purpose of collecting such information as will enable the Government to make the necessary arrangements for the administration of the affairs of the affairs of the colony when provinces shall have ceased to exist. The task before the Government is no easy one. It is admitted on all hands that New Zealand is a sadly overgoverned country at the present time. Her staff of officials, colonial and provincial, is enormous. Almost every second individual one meets, is in some form or another in receipt of Government pay. One of the strongest arguments in favor of the abolition of the provinces is, that it will remedy this evil to some extent. "We have had enough of the expensive luxury of Superintendents, Provincial Executives, and Provincial Councils. The cost of those bodies has now come to be vastly disproportionate to the small amount of work performed by them. They have long ceased to discharge any but the merest legislative functions, their performances in this respect being confined to the passing of a few Eoad Diversion Ordinances, and Appropriation Bills. An examination of the contents of the latter will satisfy any one but the most ardent provincialist, that it is high time that Provincial Governments ceased to exist. Take the case of Canterbury. The Superintendent, Provincial Secretary, Provincial Treasurer and assistants cost yearly £3725; the Provincial Council costs £2175; the police, £28,790; the Secretary for Public Works and his assistants cost £1619; the Provincial Engineer’s Department, £3910; the Waste Lands Board, £950; the Survey Department, £34,000. Then we have that most expensively-managed department, the Canterbury railways, which is put down in the Appropriation Ordinance for the current year at over £140,000. Of course this sum includes not only salaries, but such items as stores, &c. We have quoted the case of Canterbury because the figures are readily within our reach. But here, at any rate, we have something to show for all this expenditure. With an Appropriation Ordinance amounting to over one million sterling, we can afford to spend even the large sums we have quoted without feeling the burden too heavy. But elsewhere a very different state of things exist. In Auckland, for example, the provincial revenue is scarcely sufficient to defray the departmental expenses. If proof were wanting to show how low provincialism has fallen in that part of the colony, we have only to refer to an incident which happened there a short time ago. In consequence of the alleged distress which was said to exist among the miners at the Thames, application was made to the Colonial Government for money to be expended on works in that locality. After a lengthened correspondence on the subject between the Superintendent and the Government, it was discovered that a sum of some £4OOO, the balance of an advance to the province, was available. The Government, therefore, proposed to expend this sum in works at the Thames, but the Provincial Treasurer was unwilling to apply it in that way, because “ the Provincial Government “ might want the amount for its ordi- “ nary expenditure.” In other words, the Provincial Executive of Auckland would have allowed the Thames miners to starve, but they would take care that their own salaries were provided for. In some of the other provinces the same state of things prevails. The greater portion of the provincial revenue is swallowed up in departmental expenses. A whole army of officials is maintained to do work which might easily-be performed by a few active men, were the absurd system of official red-tapeisra dispensed with. Many a mercantile establishment transacts three times the business done by any one of the provinces, and with one-tenth the staff.

By appointing the Commission to which we have referred, the Government have shown their willingness to face this difficult question. We hope the public will insist on the necessary reductions being properly carried oat. No Government cares to incur the odium consequent on the free use of the pruning-knife, but the circumstances of the colony imperatively demand such measures, and we believe the Government, of which Sir Julius Yogel, is the head, is equal to the emergency,