THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. TUESDAY, JANUARY 9, 1877.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2499, 9 January 1877, Page 2

THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. TUESDAY, JANUARY 9, 1877.

The first meeting of the Thames County Council has been held, and been adjourned until to-morrow at ten o'clock. The meeting itself was not fraught'with very great results, though considerable interest was evinced in its proceedings. Perhaps the most important part of the business done was the election of a chairman of the Council. After some discussion and a proposal to elect a temporary chairman it was decided that Mr Brodie be the first chairman of the Board. It was further decided that the Act should not be limited in its operation, as permitted by ClauseXL, which may be accepted as an adoption of the Act as a whole ; and the questions of the salaries of the-various officers necessary, and who such officers should be, "was postponed until to-morrow. It was agreed that applications be made* to the Government for what were, until lately, the Provincial Government Buildings, and that the same should be handed over to the County, as well as all plans, specifications, instruments, etc., which might be useful to the Council. Not much else was done, and what else was done appears in our report of the proceedings. The first meeting of the Council has passed off satisfactorily enough: may its successors be like it.

It is generally speaking a very bad thing, and is generally acknowledged to be so, to go from one extreme to the other. The old maxim medio tutissimus ibis, you will proceed most safely when you are in the middle of the way, is not the Jess true on account of its antiquity. But men so frequently pass from one extreme to the other by sudden changes instead of by gradual stages, that the last state is often as bad if not worse than the first. JSTor. is this rapid transition peculiar only to individuals; it often marks the, con duct of those who are banded together for supposed good. A sudden desire seizes a man, we will say formerly a spendthrift, and in his wish to become less so, he passes to the other extreme and becomes a miser. A sudden thought occurs to a governing body that they are considered to be extravagant, and in their desire to escape the imputation, they become! penurious. This is very often the case j it is to be hoped it will not be the case in New Zealand. The policy of not spending what is sufficient to keep up an effective form of Government with efficient officers is just as short-sighted as is the attempt to spend £2 where only one is forthcoming. Our meaning is this. It has been said both by the Commissioner of Customs, the Honorable George McLean, and by Dr Pollen that the Ministry is committed to a^policy of retrenchment, and therefore certain requests involving expenditure of money could not be complied with. rlhis is all very well if the retrenchment policy takes a right direction; and one direction—and a right one too—which it is said it will take, is the reduction of the Armed Constabulary Force by the number of two hundred. There will, of course, be hardships to those who have to be disbanded, and who, perhaps for no fault of. their own, are fixed upon for dismissal, and have to turn their kands to what they best can to win their daily bread; but still the A.C. Force has been for some time past so much more ornamental than necessary—that we say not useful—that the wonder is, not that it js to be reduced now, but that it has not beea reduced long before. The retrenchment policy is also to make further reductions and to amalgamate offices, and in speaking on this subject Mr McLean is reported to have said, " The Government must curtail expenditure, not only in your district (Milton) but elsewhere. We are committed to retrenchments, and we must effect them, or we could not meet the Assembly." So far so well, but if instead of contenting themselves with just and necessary retrenchments the government have recourse to violent cures, and cut off or refuse necessary expenditure, then, as we, have said, they lay themselves open to deserved censure. It is said do not do things by halves, but they have to be done in this way sometimes to avoid overdoing them, and this may be the case with the Government policy of retrenchment.