Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 1864.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume IV, Issue 185, 29 July 1864, Page 5 (Supplement)

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 1864.

The Provincial Treasurer has just produced his financial statement, and a verypretty statement it is. We observe that whereas the expenditure or debit side of the account is £032,000 odd, the revenue or credit side is only £20,000, and that, too, after undergoing a vigorous process of screwing and squeezing. Here is a pretty specimen of the business habits and financial arrangements of our Government; they cannot make the two ends meet anyhow. They don’t even favor us with any specific for this deficit. It does not appear in the plain, unvarnished tale of £12,000 short of the expenditure for the coming year, that any remedy for that little matter is proposed or even suggested. The Government has got a bill passed for the disbursement of the suppositionary borrowed £60,000, but they do not appear to have set aside any of those unhatched chickens for the purpose of meeting, on paper, the deficit of this or other years; so that we do not at present see what is to be done. It does not seem to have occurred

to the’ able compilers and compounders of the broad balance sheet before us, thatTprobably itywould be as -well if the)expenditure was kept within the income'instead of out of it. That arrangement, though, to ordinaryminds, a very simple and suggestive plan, seems'to be below (or above—who can tell ?) the notice)of those“great financiers who have just produced, apparently after much labor, the very remarkable specimen of book-keep-ing to which we refer. The' items set down with so much exactness, as representing an equivalent of public work to be executed some of these days, are very interesting, as showing how admirably all that sort of business is arranged, so as to secure the hill spending of the money—apparently yet uncoined—which is . devoted to this species of sacrifice. We find under this heading, that every possible precaution has been taken to prevent the public service arriving at anything like working order, and for keeping up that confusion which now pervades the Departments. Clerks are paid as high asjndncipals, and principals receive just enough pay to make them take less interest in the work of their departments than the Clerks. We had rather be a subordinate in the Provincial Service than a chief. Perhaps, however, it is but fair to give the clerks as good pay as the “ heads,’ ’ for it is pretty clear that these last, judging from extant specimens, have, as a rule, a horror of giving a pennyworth for their penny if they can help it. To lounge from one Public to another Public, avoiding the Public Offices as much as possible en route, in case of accidentally falling in with a bit of inconvenient business that requires doing ;’and to render] themselves conspicuous only by their idleness, appears to be the chief object for which those gentlemen live and have their pay; they form a mighty host of valiant supporters of the Government,' and who, with their salaries drawn in their hands, are ready at any moment, backed by their assistants and all others in the same case as themselves, to charge, put to flight, and exterminate all that race of sweeps (like ourselves, for instance) who dare to impugn the wisdom of that Government; —in short, all those who don’t believe in them or their Government at any price, and who look upon the whole lot as dear at one shilling the gross. The most unanswerable question to put to the Government officials in this Province would be “ What do you, do for your pay ?” The man amongst them who can give a satisfactory answer to that query is a curiosity not to be lost sight of. Great care has been taken, we observe, to provide for the due inspection of the sheep and cattle, those dearest children and products of our Province. This shows a latent sign of humanity in the hearts of our rulers whichsis really quite charming. But somehow or other it)would seem that the children of men are an inferior production, which should be discountenanced rather than encouraged. The idea of providing for the inspection of the education of the people ! It’s not to be thought of. “ Why,” says his Honor in private, “if I was to encourage anything so vastly absurd, I should certainly live to see the day when instead of having to rule sheep and cattle, I should be bored to death with having to rule men. The Country, my good sir, would be overrun with men and women in no time, and all doing well, too, —a contingency too horrible to contemplate.”

We also notice a piece of uncalled-for impudence, which can have originated in no other head than that of the member for Porangabau, taking the shape of a beggarly salary of £SO a year to Mr. Speaker, as if that gentleman had Ms price, like the rest of the hungry crew. Of all the men in that council, we believe that the Speaker is the last man to be bought, at all events we hope not for such a beggarly sum as £SO a* year. The office of Speaker is a very honorable office, and we are happy to say that the gen-

tleman who now fills it is worthy of it, and

we do trust that he will not forget the dignity of that office by accepting any sort of pay from the public Treasury. His hands at least must be free from even the suspicion of corruption. Upon the whole, then, we recommend these Estimates, or financial statement, or whatever it is, to the readers of this journal, as a very fine specimen or exampleof how large a sum of money mny be got rid of without the most remote or shadowy chance of any equivalent being got for it.