Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1864.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume IV, Issue 201, 18 November 1864, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1864.

It is a most remarkable circumstance that the poorer this Province gets, the more it would seem do we require officialdom. Me. Lean’s Government, which was to do all sorts of fine things, has been prodigal of appointments. Every office swarms with clerks —every department is crowded with assistants, so much so indeed that it appears to us that the hardest day’s work these gentlemen ever do is thinking what on earth there is to he done. The member for Porangahau—that unfledged Socrates—that unhatched Plato, in the days when he was in opposition, cut and hacked and hewed at the Estimates in fine style, smiting deputy-officialdom hip and thigh, with what weapon we need hardly mention ; hut if all be true which we hear of Samson, who made use of a like instrument to the destruction of his enemies, we should say it must be a very potent one, reducing thereby poor despairing clerkhood to the verge of destitution, and so effectually eradicating all surplus expenditure in that direction that really there was rather more work done then than now. But under McLean, who delights in a troop of hungry dependents hanging at his heels, and glories in seeing a lot of , poor withered hats, wdiose glory (if they ever had any) like that of their owners has long since departed, raised from lowly pates in his honor at every hundred yards on his way down street, deputy-officialdom

thrives, flourishes, increases, and multiplies amazingly. Every clerk now has a clerk, and every head of a department has, by consequence, such a lot of clerks, that he doesn’t know which way to turn to get anything done. We fear it is a decided case of Tom helping Jack to do nothing. Mind, we only fear so—we don’t exactly say so. We know of one highly intelligent gentleman in the service who used to get on capitally in his particular branch of the business until, in an evil hour, his Honor generously inundated him with assistance, since when he has given up. in despair, and spends his days in calmly watching his small army of helpless helpers, who are as calmly watching one another, just now and again relieving the monotony of this kind of thing by killing a fly or two on the official window-panesj after which great effort they all subside into a collapsed condition. Such is life.