PROVINCIAL EXTRAVAGANCE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 237, 15 August 1872, Page 8

PROVINCIAL EXTRAVAGANCE.

Master Humphrey; in the " Otago Daily Times" gives the public the following sketch of his views of Provincial Government extraYagence. " For years past, our ordinary expenditure has grealely exceeded our income, and of late the increase in the annual deficits has been so^ rapid that it now amounts to hundreds of thousands. The causes of this state of things are so apparent that I need hardly particularise them. With a small population, not exceeding that of some of the principal towns of England, we have been cursed with th most costly and complicated system or series of Governments ih the whole world. To gain a slight idea of the ex:ravagance we have been supporting, let any unprejudiced man Btep into that pestilent talking-shop called the Provincial Council. Let him run over in his mind the list of salaries which that institution implies, with its Superintendent, Executive, Speaker, Clerks, Messengers, Sergeant-at-Arms, and the whole paraphernalia. Let him reflect that the same deplorable exhibition of imbecility, and the same outrageous waste, goes on in half a dozen similar talking-shops. Let him pass in review the long series of jobs that have been perpetrated here. Let him then cast his eye to the South and observe a railway constructed afc a cost of £400, 000, for the ordinary requirements of whose traffic literally few donkey carts would suffice. Let him go and see the jetty, costing .£40,000, at which the only ship that has ever discharged was the ship that conveyed the timber to construct> road way to it. When he has thus striven to realise in some faint degree the reckless folly displayed by our own Provincial Governments, let him imagine the same sort of thing going on to a larger or less extent in the other Provincial Councils ; whilst over all there has been a General Governmeut outstripping every one of its subordinate governments with a dignified magnitude of extravgance. Lat him do this, and it will no longer be a matter of surprise that the last penny should have been wrung from che taxpayer, that our accumulated interest is onl*staved off by further addition*, to the debt, and the salaries of our ovei grown armyof officials can only be pa I by the proceeds of fresh loans.