COST OF PROVINCIALISM.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 13, Issue 659, 25 February 1869, Page 4

COST OF PROVINCIALISM.

(From tne Otago Daily Times.)

In every Province we find the same political machinery at work. The most astonishing feature about this machinery is its expensiveness. The pompous paraphernalia, justified by the vast necessities of an empire, shine in modified glory within the petty limits of our provinces. Dickeus could hardly exaggerate the humorous aspect of such a spectacle. The grandeurs of Royalty are presented in the person of a Superintendent; Parliament appears in the shape of a Council* with Speaker and Sergeant-at-Arms ; while one Cabinet succeeds another after passing through the throes of a crisis in the approved fashion. Officialdom assumes dimensions that bear no proportion to the population. Our philosopher would imagine that such a system had grown up as the result of a long period of prosperity, and-that the people of New Zealand were so wealthy as to be quite indifferent to their public expenditure. Casting his eyes over the long array of figures in the Estimates, he would observe the frame-work of a system huge enough and costly enough to meet the necessities of a large and thickly-peopled territory. The first items he would meet with stand as follows: — Superintendent and Secretary £1,550 Executive Council 3,945 Provincial Council 3,100 £8,595 This expenditure is incurred before we reach the actual administration of public business. For jails and schools and other institutions of the kind, their attendant officers, the public must expect to pay; and in those branches of civil service it is compara tively easy to keep expenditure in check. But there seems no necessity in the nature of things for the payment of large salaries to public officers, whose duties might be discharged without any cost to the public. Here is the point at which retrenchment should begin ; for here retrenchment might be effected without any risk of lessening the efficiency of the service In humbler departments, to cut down a salary or to impose additional work is to create dissatisfaction. It may be fairly urged in many such cases that the salary was not excessive, while the work to be done for ir afforded sufficient occupation. It may also be urged in such cases that the salary was the sole inducement for the performance of the work. No honor was attached to it. No ambition was gratified. No patronage or power followed in its train. He who received it had laid aside all thoughts of an independent career, had unfitted himself for private pursuits, had cut himself off from all connections with the world of active business. These objections do not present themselves in the cases of those gentlemen who enter public life not for the means oi living, but for the distinction. To deprive them of their salaries would not deprive them of a career. The salary is a contingency. "When it comes, it comes as a windfall. When it goes, he who loses it is not re garded as a deserving object of sympathy. His position is analogous to that of a soldier, whose loot is seized and carried off by another. If a suspicion exists that the salary is an object with him who seeks the office, his public usefulness is lessened. Suspected out of office, in office he is distrusted, Therefore a great public benefit, as well as the benefit to the individual, would result from the abolition of such salaries. It cannot be objected that no men of character and ability would seek distinction in the public service, were such a course adopted. They who seek it are always careful to assert that the emoluments of office have no attraction for them, In other departments of the public service, men of character and ability are never wanting when unpaid duties are to be performed. The municipal affairs of the city involve much anxious attention to enumerable details not atall attractive in themselves. A less attractive range of details could scarcely occupy the mind. Yet candidates come

forward in crowds whenever a municipal election takes place. Again, the duties of a Justice of the Peace are not trivial. Great responsibility attaches to them. Yet the honor of the office is always sufficient to attract suitable men, and there is no reason to believe that the non-receipt of a salary involves any negligence in the discharge of its duties. Instances of the kind might be multiplied but it,is needless to multiply them. No One can be ignorant of the facts, nor can any one doubt the conclusion drawn from them.