THE STANDARD. SATURDAY, MAY 3, 1873.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 49, 3 May 1873, Page 2

THE STANDARD.

SATURDAY, MAY 3, 1873.

■“We shall sell to no ujan justice or right: We shall deny to no man justice or right: We shall defer to no man justice or right.”

While the General Government, acting under pressure from the Assembly, are reforming the upper crust, or the part which is seen, of the Civil Service, it would confer an incalculable boon on the colony if it devises some scheme of departmental supervision, which would give to the public a security against imposition, in either time, manners or money. Several exchanges during the past few anorfths have contained complaints affecting some portion of the Civil Service adminstration; some department or other has come under the editorial lash. Now we are quite ■ aware that in very many instances, the public have very little sympathy with the Civil Service as a profession. Ii« members, for the most part, are looked upon as endeavoring to maintain a separate and distinct caste at the public expense, without a corresponding benefit accruing therefrom. Hence when any complaint is made, the outer world, which the Civil Servants affect to despise, very often adds “sarve him right” as a rider to the verdict. The recent charges against, and changes effected in, the Telegraph Department generally, are a proof of this ; but it is of little avail to patch over the evils ; the work will bo worse than half done if the reform which has been so long promised and expected is not at once thorough and comprehensive: it must be departmental in the plain understanding of the term, and not political. The sole objects to be gained in re-planning the conditions and permanency of future service, must be those of efficiency and economy ; there must be no calculation of political influence or personal interest. No considerations of offence likely to be taken by political supporters must deter a minister who has a meritorious officer on the one hand, and a needy relative, or friend’s friend, on the other, from doing his duty. Merit should be a public servant’s sure passport to promotion. According to the security he feels that justice will be done to him, so will he devote his best energies to the acquisition of that which is most calculated to raise him in the official scale; and the public would reap the benefit, as he is relieved from a necessity to divide his attention between las duty and the fear that if he has not extraneous influence at command ■his chances of promotion are very small indeed.

But who is to do all this. Will the Government? Has «ng Government the courage to face a House of Representatives, (whose members have friends •and relatives pensioned off on the great army roll, and who, many of them expect official blessings themselves,) and

cut away the foundation on which its political existence rests ? But it must come to this, or the service must be Americanized altogether. Mr. Stafford —ever full of promises, who has had the re-moddelling of the service under his management more than once, and has helped, as much as any public man, to perpetuate tho evils — once again deplores the system of corruption and injustice now in full blast. In the debate on the no confidence motion which put him in office again last Session, he thus foreshadows the end of that system and its consequences : — Do not I know what the disappointments of office are ? Why, to enter that nuptial chamber were to enter it in fact with a service so thoroughly demoralized that 1 really tumble when I think what has to be done: it is demoralized in tho most objectionable manner from the fact that a large proportion of the permanent officers of the Government we fast becoming political partisans. That is a position which I, whether in office or out* of office, have most stedfastly set my face against and attempted to repress. If that is allowed to go on in the service for some time longer, then v<e victis! to the permanent officers, whenever there is a change of Ministry : that will be the result of it.

This however would not not be a desirable state of things. It would not conduce to efficiency ; and would tend only in the direction of reducing the Service to the turmoil and scrambling for office necessary to a Presidential Election in America; the contemplation of which leaves, however, this good impression in its favor, that in America they profess to making political support a condition to official employment, while in New Zealand political hypocrisy teaches our public men to practice that which they profess to condemn. Well vce victis be it: the sooner the better.