GOVERNMENT SALARIES AND RETRENCHMENT.

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

GOVERNMENT SALARIES AND RETRENCHMENT.

To the Editor of the Hawke a Taj/ Times.

Sui, —By the very frothy ami irritated tone of a letter bearing the ominous initials “ 0. P. S,” otherwise “ Over-Paid Servant” possibly, I should take the writer to be one directly interested in the support of Government salaries, and whose quiet nibbles from the public purse your article might possibly disturb. The writer, after asserting that “the Land Sales till the exchequer as plentifully now as ever” asks—“and if they do not, would that justify the abolition of the Provincial Staff nolens volens? I will answer him by asking—are che land sales always to fill the exchecquer as plentifully as now ? and if so, are we bound to keep up the Government Staff to its present strength if we can do without them, when the money is wanted to open up roads and other necessary 'works in the province ? After this the writer indulges in a strain of scurrility and falsehood, winch might be very pithily replied to were it necessary, and winds up by stating that “the most indignant are not the most virtuous,” which would no doubt apply very happily to his effusion in the Herald , and says he is “borne out by an unlucky question put to Mr. Colenso, wdiom he seems deeply interested in, as he is quite in love with the reply made by that gentleman, that he had “ worked himself into the Treasurership,” which office the interrogator had “applied for and did not get,” and chuckles and asks “do not these things make it obvious why assailants against officials and their salaries are so numerous? Poes the Times claim any higher, purer motives ?” I trust it does, Mr. Editor, and hope you -will continue to speak out fearlessly and boldly, even if it strikes home to, “0. P. S.” wdiose ■wrath I have tried to appease. I am, Sir, Yours, etc. Nox-Official.