The Globe. TUESDAY, JANUARY 9, 1877.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 795, 9 January 1877, Page 2

The Globe. TUESDAY, JANUARY 9, 1877.

The tone of indignant surprise with which an article in the St. Petersburgh Oolos, has been received in England, accusing Lord Beaconsfield of pecuniary corruption in the course he has been taking regarding the Eastern Question, ought to cause our public men in .New Zealand to calmly ponder over our political condition. It places in striking contrast the high opinion entertained of English statesmen compared with those of the Continent; and the credence given to the slander at the different European Courts, gives us some idea of the opinions entertained of their rulers in those cities. As the Spectator puts it, “ Englishmen no more think of accusing a Minister of making money by the use of official information than of accusing him of murder.” On the Continent it is different; there distrust of their public men is almost universal. The fear of being charged with corruption is always an element in the motives which influence Continental statesmen, and it consequently exercises a most injurious influence upon their public men. The contrast existing between England and the Continent in the above respect is deserving of careful study by us in New Zealand, During the last session of the Assembly a large amount of time was taken up with charges of corruption against individual members of the Ministry. Now, however, impolitic and ill-judged many of the acts of the Government were, there are not a large number in New Zealand we hope, who believe that Ministers were influenced by corrupt motives in the course which they took, or that they reaped a pecuniary benefit therefrom. Yet Ministers were compelled day after day to defend themselves against such charges. The fact that such are gravely made, and apparently believed, indicates how much lower we in this colony have fallen in our estimate of public men, compared with the state of opinion in England. Speaking of the state of affairs on the Continent, the Spectator says, “ We hardly know which is worse for the state concerned, the reality of corruption amongst underlings, or the ready suspiciousness of corruption amongst chiefs which exists amongst the multitude, but we know which is politically the most formidable. An administration may be purged of corruption by a resolute master in a week, but a multitude is not cured of surpiciousness in a generation ; and, until it is cured, governors and governed will never be cordially in accord, and governments consequently never strong.” These words are full of warning to us in New Zealand. We are, year after year, giving more indications of being suspicious of our public men. Not only are reckless statements made in the House without proof or subsequent apology, but they are apparently believed by a certain class outside. It is our boast that our institutions are an improved edition of those we left behind in the old country, but we have much to learn before “an elaborate and circumstantial accusation of corruption, brought against a Premier known to be a poor man,” would be regarded “ from the Premier to his smallest opponent” as nothing “ but an unusually imbecile exhibition of ignorant and childish spite.”