Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1863.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume III, Issue 139, 11 September 1863, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1863.

When the Herald , fa the exuberance of that playful fancy which renders it so conspicuous amongst the papers of the earth, sang a song or two in praise of the advent of Mr. McLean as Superintendent of this Province, that paper seems to have forgotten that the antecedents of its hero, in his public capacity as Chief Land Purchase Commissioner, are not such as to lead those people who are thoroughly acquainted with the subject, to anticipate in a corresponding spirit very gratifying results to this Province from the arrival and installation in the highest place in our synagogue of the illustrious gentleman in question. Nor as matters have turned out, are we prepared to admit that the views which we have taken upon the subject, are views which require any modification.

That the present state of this Province is very deplorable and extremely disgraceful is a fact patent, and but too painfully evident to all who are not intentionally blinded by the ardent rays of our contemporary’s brilliant sun, notwithstanding that that refulgent luminary is in the full resplendency of his career, shedding his benignant and vivifying influence upon the fertile columns of that remarkable journal. We have only to cast a glance upwards to the Land Office, regardless of the tasteful manner inrwhich the superadjacent grounds are being laid out, at the expense of the Public and at the instigation of the Provincial Government, to see the nest wherein has been laid an egg of jobbery, of such surpassing magnitude that the mind of man is almost lost in the contemplation of that great effort of Provincial incubation. For some inscrutable purpose it was found advisable to endeavor to force upon Mr. Tiffen’s acceptance the duties of an office entirely repugnant to, and incompatible with, the duties of an office which he already held. By that act Mr. Tiffen was compelled to abdicate his throne in the Land Office, leaving the place which he occupied a ghastly blank. We are not now going into the question of whether the resignation of the Crown Land Commissioner and Chief Surveyor is or is not a loss to the Province, because that does not in the least affect the question as to whether the Superintendent -was justified in making such an arrangement os obliged the resignation of that officer, before it was determined who should fill the vacant place. His Honor, we recollect, said, when talking over the matter with his Council, that if Mr. F, refused the'combination of offices, there would be no difficulty in finding plenty of

people who would that distinction. That observation of his Honor was true enough in one sense, but by no means likely to prove true in a sense gratifying to the good people of Hawke’s Bay. There is no doubt that the Superintendent has a fine long list of expectants of favors at his fingers’ ends, but the point is not so much whether there be many hungry individuals ready to snap up any morsel thrown to them from the great man’s table, as whether there is to be found amongst these respectable but somewhat ravenous parties one who would fill the post assigned him with profit to the Province and credit to himself. We think not. Mr. M’Lean will take very good care to put in the office a person cut out of his own cloth, one whose aspirations are confined within the limits of his patron’s favor. A nice sort of an animal he will be, and a pretty fix the unfortunate Province will get into, in consequence of an utter, and, probably, very incompetent stranger being placed in a position where local knowledge combined with considerable professional skill is essentially necessary, and without which the most disastrous difficulties will arise in relation to the lands of this Province which it is possible to imagine. We have reason to believe that there is a tremendous accumulation of arrears of work to get over in the Survey Department, to say nothing of the unravelment of most intricate questions in the Land Office. In the meantime the business of these offices, the very soul, in fact of the Province, is suspended, and his Honor waits the return of this steamer and that steamer, in placid expectancy of the arrival of one or other of his long-looked for and trusty servants to relieve him of his difficulty. The first gentleman upon whom Mr. M’Lean set his heart and eyes as a fit and proper person to “ do” the three departments, to be in fact, the practical illustration of the “ trio juncta in uno'' talked about in ancient literature, has refused the honor of that distinguished, but troublesome trinitarianism, and plurality of offices, not because he was loth to undertake the Herculean task proffered to him, but because the pay (sordid fellow !) was not quite up to his mark, certainly not A.l. And here we agree with the unknown party to whom we refer —the pay is not A.l. by any means. Four hundred a year, and with unlimited work, is rather hard lines, in an expensive place like Napier, when there may be found at any time five or six very respectable gentlemen called B.M.’s getting very nearly if not quite as much pay as £4OO per annum, without the most remote ghost of a shadow of work attached by way of a rider vo their salaries. “ Divil a taste,” as Paddy would say, r of work do they ever do. Well, this is rather a discouraging state of things to a man who, in order to fulfil the duties required of him in the Land Office, must have served a very long and very severe apprenticeship, and come into that office with a certainty of a most toilsome time before him.

The long and short of the matter, then, is this, His Honor’s favorite scheme of knocking the three offices into one must be knocked in the head. “ Cheap and dirty” is a vulgar but very expressive way of putting the case ; but at the same time a most ruinously mistaken way of acting upon it. We can, however, see no other way of getting over the difficulty besides dividing the oyster, and giving one-half to a commissioner, another half to a surveyor, and the remaining half to his serene highness the Treasurer, which last office is purely imaginary, as we have no money now, and don’t appear likely to have any, and even supposing that we did get any by any unlooked for accident, it would hardly have time to get breath under the cool and airy shadows of the iron safe kept for that purpose in the lofty chamber set apart and dedicated specially to the Treasurer, before it (the money) would have to be taken out again and distributed with the customary impartiality which always

accompamgjf that ceremony, amongst the thousand and be thus for ever evaporated. We have a very strong supposition that His Honor, being, as he is, a most profound and adroit schemer, never intended that this little scheme of the unity of offices, about which we are writing, ever should fructify and bear fruit. We incline strongly to opine that that crafty gentleman was quite sure that no really competent person of character would accept the hodge podge of duties he proposed to give him, and therefore while he was enabled to knock off Mr. Tiffin and Mr. Colenso, both no friends of His Honor’s, he was left at liberty to kill two other little birds with another little stone, by getting them, being friends of His Honor’s, to come and chirp and sing awhile upon the twigs of officialism which were held out to them, and that, in fact, be could place a couple of stout henchmen of his own clan into the office, and turning round upon the indignant and discomfited Mr. T. say, in the memorable words of his renowned countryman,— “These are clan M’Leans, warriors true ; And, Saxon, I’m the reg’lar do!” And at the same time, smiling in the sweetest conceivable manner upon his astonished councillors and the utterly stupefied public generally, adding, “ And what, gentlemen, under these distressing circumstances, could I otherwise do ?”