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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume I, Issue 23, 5 December 1861, Page 3

To the Editor of the Hatches Bay Times. Sir, —It cannot fail to be a source of considerable gratification tomany of your readers to perceive that your well-directed efforts in the exposure of existing abuses are beginning to produce their legitimate effects in the proper quarters. One individual is already crying peccavi very loudly in your contemporary’s columns, you arc evidently treading very heavily on his corns. Hark ! How he cries about you “ recommending so wholesale a slaughter of offices and salaries,” being sadly afraid of becoming one of the first victims of retrenchment, and, O mores ! wants to have a reason given that shall “ persuade” him that you are justified in your recommendation. -Sir, this whining epistle bears the signature “ 0.P.5.,” which for ought I knowmay mean 0. P. Stultus, else why should he profess to be so blind to reasons which all else can see so well ? He is evidently anxious to appear unable to comprehend your arguments, and so distorts and perverts your statements. Well, you cannot be expected to give Stidtus reason as well as reasons, nor to make him persuaded against the preponderating influence of .£ s. d. Your argument was not that the “ offices gradually created by the late Superintendent are now useless because the laud sales are less,” and none but a wilful Stultus could have so understood you ; but that in direct opposition to the expressed professions of his late honor he did “ gradually create” a multiplicity of “ unnecessary offices.” acknowledged to be so by his own lips not very long before. Unnecessary, not only “ now,” but at the time of their creation, and apparently only created to reward a supporter, or to-- purchase over ah opponent. But as “ temporary prosperity” caused by “ extensive land sales” enabled him to “ excuse” though not to “justify” his policy at the time, does not now, and can-

not again exist, reason sufficient both to “justify’ - and “persuade” is given for their abolition. But Stultus says “ the land sales fill the exchequer as plentifully as ever.” This you deny; but if it was true, it does not “justify ’ the continuance of “ unecessary offices,” and the waste of the public money on the “ drones of office,” instead of its legitimate expenditure on public works. O.P.S. cannot deny that we have his late honor’s testimony that L1,()00 a-year is quite enough for our government to cost —that the Superintendent and two clerks is a quite sufficient staff of officials. The doctrine is-his and not yours only. But supposing the “ temporary prosperity” continues yet, O.P.S. knows quite well it is still but temporary and with the policy of our new Governor towards the native race the acquisition of waste lands has ceased, and the land sales cannot continue to “ fill the exchequer as plentifully as ever ;” but that if the “ wholesale slaughter” you recommend should not take place, the taxgatherer must shortly dip his hand into our pocket to find wherewith to feed the “ drones of office.”

Passing over the trashy rhodomontade about drapers’ assistants ami printers’ devils, we next meet with Stultus"s chef d’ auvre—- “ good officers should be as well paid as contractors for stationary and printing.” Now, is it not strange that it does not strike O.P.S. that an open market and competition is quite sufficient to protect the public funds in this direction from waste ? I have never yet read that “ his honor the superintendent has been pleased to appoint Mr. so-and-so printer and stationer to the council, at a salary of so much per annum, as I have of the host of drones who are not always “faithful servants” (as some of the neighboring Provinces can testify), nor “ good men and true,” neither are they, nor can they be,-obtained in open market; but too often are appointed from favoritism, and not regard to “ ability.” I am, Sir, Yours & c., Aiiurhu. Napier, Dec. 2, 1801.