The Nelson Evening Mail. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1877.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 286, 3 December 1877, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1877.

[n the statement of the public accounts for ;he' year endiug 30th June, 1876, there is a rery curious return under the head "Advances," showing the amount of imprest ad rauces made to the various officers of the jovernment during the period named. A9 lonie of our readers may not be aware of the latureof these "imprests." we may state ihat they are advances made to the " imiresters " for certain purposes, for which the ixact amount required is not known, th&money leing paid into their personal accounts. For nstance, when the elections of members )f the County Councils in Nelson were to ;ake place their precise cost was not known, md an advance of £100 was made to the Returning Officer personally, and of this he lad to furnish art account when the elections ryere over. So, too, at the sitting of the Supreme Court an advance is made to the Registrar personally, out of which he has to neet the expenses, rendering an account of ;he expenditure, and being debited or :redited with the balance as the case may be. This may be necessary, and to a certain ex;ent, perhaps, unavoidable, where small sums miy are to be dealt with, but where large iraounts are placed in officers' hands without my check the objections to such a system nustat once present themselves to every nind. To what extent this is carried out in Sew Zealand may be gathered, from the ;ables before us from which we learn that J2O officers were thus entrusted during tha Fear with imprest advances to the amout of ao less than £.680,501. Of this a balance of £52.886 remained in their hands on the 30th Tune, 1876. We will quote a few instances: —The Resident Engineer at Dunedin and the Land Purchase Officer at Wanganui had £13,518 and £16,750 respectively pass through their hands iu this way, the Inspector of Armed Constabulary at Waikato £17,000, the Inspector of Surveys at Auckland £15,500; Mr J. Mackay, the'Larid Pur.hase Officer afc Auckland had £9659 of '' imprest " balance in his hands on the 30th June, 1875, transacted business ou similar terms to the extent of £20957 during the : pear, and at the close of it retained a balance towards the next year of £6202. In June 1875, Dr. Featherston, who was then in England as Agent-General, had in his hands as Land Purchase Commissioner the sura of £1962, and in June 1876 he was still debited with the same amount. These are a few of the more prominent items within the colony, and tben we come to the " Foreign Imprest Account." From this we learn that the •• old account " with the AgeDt-General stood as follows:— On the 30th June, 1875, he had in hand a balance of £28,657, and on the corresponding date in 1876 £88,730. Under the " new account" he had on that date a balance 3f £253,869 of imprest aupply standing to his account. If these large sums are paid in the same way aa the smaller ones, it must be a nice thing to be Agent-General with amounts such as these on Jfixed deposit. To those initiated in the mysteries of New Zealand finance, such a system of dealing with fche public funds may not appear to be anything very extraordinary, but the outsider cannot fail to be struck with its remarkable looseness.