THE GOVERNMENT CHEQUES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5657, 17 May 1879, Page 3

THE GOVERNMENT CHEQUES.

Our attention has been called to the fact that the paragraph which appeared in the Timaru Herald, and was forwarded by the Press Agency to this paper ou Wednesday last, has never been contradicted. We have much pleasure in publishing the manager’s letter, which will be found elsewhere. From the Timaru Herald of the 15 th we extract the following, and judging from the explanation offered by the Evening Post last night we believe that the facts of the Herald cannot be disputed, although the inferences it drew from them might be in some measure incorrect, 'i'be Herald says :—“ Our attention was directed some weeks ago to the fact that Government cheques had been refused payment at the Bank, and we were asked to comment upon it, as involving a great hardship to a number of people. We declined at first to do so, however, supposing that there had been some mistake about the cheques, and that they would be paid iu due course. Several times afterwards similar requests were made to us, and we were asked by leading mercantile men to explain why the cheques were not cashed. We took no public notice of these communications, though, until the day before yesterday, when, having made inquiries which satisfied us of the accuracy of the statements that had been made to us, we mentioned in our leading article that we ‘had hoard a number of sinister rumors lately, about Government cheques being dishonored.’ This was literally true. The subject, indeed, was the talk of the town, and if we have heard one person speak of it, we have heard fifty. Surely there was nothing wrong in publishing, and endeavoring to explain, a matter which everybody was discussing, and which was already public property. • It is stated in the telegraphed article that the cheques referred to were refused payment iu consequence of non-compliance with departmental rules. If that is the case, it throws a perfectly new light ou the subject. We were assured positively that the cheques were duly signed and countersigned by the proper officers, and that no apparent reason existed why they should not be cashed when presented at the bank. It this was not so, then we have been altogether misled; but wo have every reason to believe that the information upon which we based our remarks was correct in every particular. If the Treasury officials have made some blunder which led to cheques which were really payable being refused payment, the fault lies with them. We had n i possible means, of course, of ascertaining anything of that kind ; and, if we had ascertained it, we should still have been perfectly justified in condemning a system by which departmental blunders could inflict hardship upon persons entitled to money from the Government. We refuse to admit that the Press is excluded-from commenting on a purely public matter of this kind. The evil lies, not in the discussion of the non-pay ment of the cheques, but in the fact of the non-payment of the cheques.”