CORRESPONDENCE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 155, 30 June 1880, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor of the "Evenin<j Mail." Sir— ln your issue of the 16th instant, under the head "Parliamentary," it appears that Mr Bryce, in moving the second reading of the Native Land Sales Bill made some startling disclosures. He speaks of " the terrible iniquity" which had grown up under the Government land purchase system. One agent at Tauranga squanders £11,000, giving natives orders on stores, and getting them to sign blank vouchers, which he afterwards fills in to blind the audit. . Another on the Waimate Plains gets tbree natives who owned no land to sign vouchers for £1000, and then spends the money (which the deluded taxpayers of New Zealand supposed had been invested in land) on the disgraceful Waitara meeting. Were the foregoing isolated cases it would be bad enough, but it appears that it is only a sample of the way in which the publio has been robbed by its paid servants. But, Sir, whae I and the public want to know, and have a right to know, is the names of the men who have swindled us, and not to have them shielded under the term ,( an officer"— made in fact members of a Corporation, which we are told has neither a soul to be saved, nor a body to be kicked. As a deserter used to be branded with the letter D, so let the names of these public plunderers be published from one end of the colony to the other, and held up to general scorn and contempt. But there ia another and very serious side to this matter. If sharp and speedy punishment does not overtake such ' evil doers, our population, which is being educated by our representative institutions, will soon cease to feel scorn and contempt for such conduct, hut will learn to look on successful fraud with the half [envious ad- ; ' miration which was earned by the Tammany , Ring in New York, and ( will heartily despise i a Goyernment which is too weak to defend ' the interests of which it is the appointed ; guardian. W$ pay one million a jear in

salaries, or in other words the average family [ of Bi souls pays £13 15s to keep up the noble army of officials, which is about as reasonable as a man with £200 a year keeping a carriage and six servants, but we have a right to expect faithful service, and such i flagrant breaches of trust should be visited with the punishment which in our criminal courts is awarded to a paid agent who embezzles the funds of his employer. I am, &c, F. D. Greenwood. Motueka, June 26, 1880.