The Globe. MONDAY, MAY 29, 1876.

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 606, 29 May 1876, Page 2

The Globe. MONDAY, MAY 29, 1876.

Apter our supposition last Friday in reference to Diogenes and the Otago Waste Lands Board members, it will not be going very far out of the way if we picture the state of mind that mythological dignitary would be in were he to leave unbending honesty of purpose and drop in upon the Canterbury Executive. As the light of a tallow caudle lowered into a well is an unfailing token of the state of the air therein, so probably would the light in the lantern iq the hands of the Greek grow pale and dim when brought into the presence of this intellectual body, which has secured for itself, by a series of combined strategetical absurdities, a wide and universal respect, so far as want of consistency and a total incapacity for the conducting of public business can command for it. The late railway strike was an example wherein was depicted a thorough contempt for all rules of business on the part of the Department; and so humiliating was the conclusion of the farce that we wonder we had not serious consequences to chronicle on the behalf of some of the “ clever ones.” And then the little episode of the Damon and Pythias correspondence between his Honor and the chief of the Executive, and for what —but there was a vacancy to fill, and each wanted his own way ? Well, for the sake of peace, we will admit that all this bungling, to say the very least of it, has been committed with the very best of intentions, but we are at a loss for an excuse for the proceedings of the Executive in relation to the treatment of the officials under its control. The Railways Department and its management may be taken, with confidence, as a sample of the whole ; we will, therefore, refer to a few of the inconsistencies which have marked the conduct of the Executive in relation to their servants therein. There is the statement of a correspondent of the 'Lyttelton Times, on the 25th instant, that the station master at Southbridge was dismissed because a bag of wheat was mislaid. Surely this was not an offence of so grave a nature as to call for such an extreme measure: but, as a contrast to this summary dismissal, we have another statement, in the same journal of the following day, wherein it is asserted that an official, in the passenger department was discharged for being drunk whilst in charge of a train at Timaru ; and, since then, has been employed in the passenger department at Christchurch, and has been recently locked up and fined. Presuming that the Lyttelton Times would not have inserted the letter unless there was truth in the statement, we have only to witness to how great a depth of degradation the Heads of the Executive have fallen. We are not yet informed what further course is to be taken with respect to the enquiry which was held some time since into the conduct of certain of the officers in the Engineers’ Department; it was rumoured that there was to have been a fuller investigation by the General Government, but it ha? evidently lapsed. Again, there is the ease of an employee who was sued for £l, which he had had paid him t . obtain plaintiff a situation on the railways. This ease was heard before the Resident Magistrate, who gave hie decision against the railway official, Henderson, stating that he could net conceive that the three witnesses in th< case would commit deliberate perjury Now the inference is, that, if t-.i magistrate’s decision were of any value, then the Railway Department

would have taken some action thereon ; and, from the statement that Henderson was in the employment of the Department on the 22nd instant, it would point to the conclusion that the Executive held a different view to that of the magistrate. But, whilst officials with accusations such as these should be continued as public servants, and the terrible crime of mislaying a bag of wheat subjects the evil-doer to instant dismissal, we shall be of opinion that the light in the lauteru would pale.