The Standard AND PEOPLE'S ADVOCATE. (PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY AND SATURDAY.) WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9, 1875.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 279, 9 June 1875, Page 2

The Standard AND PEOPLE'S ADVOCATE. (PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY AND SATURDAY.)

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9, 1875.

M We shall sell to no man justice or right: We shall deny to no man justice or right: We shall defer to no man justice or right.”

As will be seen by the Provincial Council proceedings, the prorogation of that body took place on the 28th ultimo, after one of the most uneventful sessions on.the records of this most uneventful province. His Honor’s speech is equally so. It cannot be said that anything has been definitely done beyond the bare fact of passing the estimates for six months, so that the anti-abolition party—of which Sir George G bet is the head—may be able, in calling the Council together again in December next, to trim their sails according to the breeze that may happen to be blowing at the time. From well-authenticated private sources we learn that Sir George Gert’s faith will induce him to play his trump cards first on the floor of the Assembly—always provided that the abolition question is really argued this session, which we much doubt. His sanguine hopefulness of the future of Auckland is so strong that whether the Ministry decline to entertain the question or not, he will probably force it on by taking up the provincial cause, and thus show the faith that he entertains in the provincial system, and in the resources of the Auckland province in particular. Our correspondent says that the Superintendent hopes, by the end of the next Assembly to have “ restored the province to its “ proper position in finance and power, “ with an income of four hundred thou- “ sand pounds a year,". If Sir George can accomplish this he will furnish a good reason for the malcontents to rally round him and support his cause. The Council, it will be seen, have voted a sum of £25 compensation to Mr. Sibdons, and£443/toMr. LusK,beingthe amount of damages sustained by him in his action with Siddons* in the District Court. This latter is one of the most unsatisfactory and inexplicable pieces of business we have heard of for a long time. Here we have a Superintendent recommending— ex parte, and in the face of the fiat of the District Court—and a Council awarding a sum of public money by way of restitution to a Government official, for costs cast against him in a court of law in defence of an action brought to recover a title to a section of land, the proceeds of the sale of which had not only been in the said official’s private possession for years, but which, had it not been for Siddons’ action would, probably, never have reached the Treasury chest at all. A mere accident has revealed the fact that Mr.. Lusk had (we still presume without any evil intention) appropriated public money to his own private use, and the Council condones the act by paying the expenses incurred in defending an action at law which hut for such “ relaxation or the strict rule ” (as the Committee put it) of dealing with public money, would never have been necessary. It is just probable that something more may yet be heard of this case. In the meantime we do not wish even to suggest that Mr. Lusk has been a particeps criminis in the detention of the money from its proper channel, or that he had any knowledge of, or complicity in, its wilful mis-appropria tion, but, from the facts before us, we cannot but express surprise that the Council should not rather have instituted a thorough investigation into the causes which led to Mr. Lusk’s humiliating position rather than have covered his laches which did not come out very creditably to him in evidence before the District Court. If the committee did do this, it is but right that the public should be made acquainted with the facts. For the present we leave the matter where it