AND GOLDFIELDS REPORTER & ADVERTISER THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 1873. "MEASURES. NOT MEN."

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 273, 24 April 1873, Page 4

AND GOLDFIELDS REPORTER & ADVERTISER THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 1873. "MEASURES. NOT MEN."

Economy, whether public or private, is a virtue, but, like all other virtues, it becomes a vice when carried to excess. In the ad minis tration of the business of the state injudicioii3 economy, or rather parsimony, is not only a viee — it is worse, for it is a blunder; a perilous blunder, fraught with mischief to the best interests of the people. In JJew Zealand, this political disease continually appears on the surface in relation to comparatively small things, and as though to enhauce^^ the evil by comparison, it even goes hand in hand with wasteful extravagance in large matters. The same Government that squandere thousands of pounds upon the show and parade of its ever travelling and vain-glorious Ministers, can cut down the allowance of witnesses in the Supreme Court to the pitiful sum of five shillings per day — an - amount which even a Chinaman would scorn to accept as a daily wage, and the insufficiency of which the slightest acquaintance with the cost of living would demonstrate. Witnesses are thus compelled to incur a personal and pecuniary loss, in addition to the loss of time consequent in giving evidence in criminal cases. The necessary result must ~ be obvious to the meanest capacity. It will be found difficult to bear testimony at such a cost to themselves, and thus by a false economy an indirect premium is offered to crime.

Another specimen of this cheeseparing policy is afforded with the electoral franchise. Formerly, the names of applicants claiming to be placed on the electoral rolls were advertised in the papers This has been discontinued, and a manuscript list, more or less legibly written, is to be posted up in some " conspicuous place," where, probably, nineteentwentieths of those principally in- ■ terested will never have a chance of seeing it, or knowing whether their claims have been received until too late to retrieve any error. The tendency to under-pay public servants is also a prominent form of political parsimony. Any emptyheaded panderer to popular pra^» judices, can declaim with a loiia voice against over-paid officials, regardless of the indisputable fiict that in every department of the state, from the judges on the Bench to policeman X on his weary " beat," the pay doled forth is less than is given for the like services in the adjacent colonies of Australia. Temptation salaries — that fruitful source of the corruption so notoriously pervading the civil .service of the United States — is rapidly becoming the rule in New Zealand also, and the same results must inevitably ensue. Good men have left, are leaving, and will continue to leave the public employ, wherein years of faithful service is ungenerously requited by reduction of pay. In other colonies and in Britain, length of servitude is attended by increase of pay. In New Zealand, year by year salaries are constantly being reduced, whilst extra work is thrown on the recipients. Sometimes a large slice is cut off by the votes of our legislators, at others some small idead head of department snips off a fragment of pay on " allowance," which the victims can ill afford to forego. All this breeds a sense of insecurity and dissatisfaction, which cannot be but detrimental to the public weal Indeed, it would seem that the present course must terminate in putting up offices for sale to the highest bidder, and so replenish the coffers of our multitudinous governments.

Herein lies the root of the difficulty. That the machinery of the public service is extravagantly conducted, and unnecessarily unwieldy no one will dispute, and it must ' continue to be so so long as such a multiplicity of governments, large or small, continue to exist. It is by simplification of the present cumbrous system and by judicious reduction of the official staff, that economy can best be effected. Retain the best men and pay them welL Let them feel that their pay

and their tenure of office is secure during good conduct, and the State will he well and honestly served. President Jefferson was wont to say that he was too sincere a repuhlican ,-to favor an idea so aristocratic as the payment of lowsalaries; and another American — Henry Ward Beecher — once told his congregation that no doubt they could get ministers to preach for a hundred dollar stipend, but then they would be men of only a hundred dollar talent. The Provincial and Colonial Legislatures will shortly assemble, and we commend this view of a very important question to their -careful consideration.

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