THE Wairarapa Mercury. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1867 TOWN EDITION. FINANCIAL REFORM.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume I, Issue 38, 23 September 1867, Page 2

THE Wairarapa Mercury. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1867 TOWN EDITION. FINANCIAL REFORM.

There will be no reduction in the taxation of the colony. It is not any part of the policy of the Ministry to effect any reduction, and the Opposition do not really desire that any reduction should be made. There will be no attempt made to substitute direct for indirect taxation ; for the members of the General and the Provincial Governments, who constitute the two leading 1 parties in the House, are not really in favor of any such substitution, There will be no retrenchment, worth noticing, effected; because a reduction in the official staff, or in the salaries of the General Government officials, would ‘ efollowed byareduction in those of the Provincial Governments, and both Ministry and Opposition are consequently interested in maintaining the existing extravagance. No reduction in taxation, no substitution of direct f>r indirect taxes, and ho retrenchment, will take place, until the various constituences throughout the Colony take a more earnest interest than they have hitherto done in public affairs. We shall find members getting up and proposing this reduction and tha f , but they will have no real desire to be successful. Such propositions will sound well on the hustings, and that is really what they intend by their proposals, and nothing more. If they were in earnest they would organise themselves into a

financial reform party, and there would be then some sincerity and meaning in their professed desire to effect a reduction in that official extravagance they can so readily denounce, but which they have no real desire to extinguish. We were in the House in 1862 when Mr Saunders, of Nelson, opposed an increase in the salaries of the Judges, and ho talked to empty benches. Wo were present when the proposal was before the House to increase the salary of the Speaker, and well do we remember the really forcible arguments that were employed by the supporters of the motion to prove that the salary of the Speaker of the House of Representatives ought to be much higher than that of the Speaker of theLegislative Council, inasmuch as he had to do more than twice as much work for his money. These arguments we must suppose, were convincing, for the House accepted the proposition all but unanimously. No sooner was this business thus satisfactorily disposed of, than up rose a member anil proposed an increase in the salary of the Speaker of the Legislative Council, inasmuch as it would be very invidious to give a less salary to the Speaker of the Upper House than that given to the Speaker of the Lower House; and this argument, too, was convincing; for the House, without more ado, assented to the proposal. It was in this wise that the salaries of the Speakers of both Houses were increased 20 per cent without farther ceremony. We think it was at the self-same sitting —we knowit was during the same session —that Mr Dillon Bell remarked that the House comprised a very different class of members than would be likely in future years to occupy its benches; and the remark was cheered with that glow of self-satisfaction which is felt by men who are the recipients of an indirect but well-timed compliment. We coincided in Mr Dillon Bell’s opinion; for we felt quite sure that if the House ever really represented the Colony it would contain members who would not at one breath vote a higher salary to its Speaker on the ground that his work was greater than that of the Speaker of the Legislative Council, and then vote a higher salary to the latter because it would be invidious to give one a higher salary than the other. The same thing was done with regard to the Under Secretaries. Mr Gisborne, the Under Colonial Secretary, who really deserved an increase of salary, bad it increased at one jump from £4OO to £6OO per annum, and of course the same increase was given to both the Treasury Secretary and the Assistant Law Officer. The fact is that from the first the Executives, both General and Provincial, would have been satisfied with less renumeration than what the General and the Provincial Legislatures, in their willingness to throw away other peoples money, were too ready too grant them. There was then a very different class of members in the House than there will bo when the Financial Reform League has effected its object. When the House of Representatives first met in Auckland in 1854 it abolished the Office of Postmaster General, and more than swallowed the saving thus effected by increasing the salaries of the several Postmasters. There was, in fact, such a scramble by the representatives of the various Provinces for as large an amount as they could clutch of the General Revenue for their particular districts that the Government was obliged at last in self-defence, to step in, and put an effectual stop to the unseemly scramble, by charging each Province with the cost of the several General Government departments located within it. But as usual in such cases, this step had the effect of preventing further mischief but it did not mitigate that which had been already effected. The present extravagant rate of salaries would never have been sanctioned had it not been for the causes here referred to; and the extravagance thus engendered will never be permanently got rid of until a party be formed in the House as well as out of doors with the express object of securing Financial Reform.