The Westport Times. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1869.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 462, 6 February 1869, Page 2

The Westport Times. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1869.

We would recommend to the attention of the Nelson Provincial Government the excellent example of the Government of Otago in that matter of much promise but of little absolute action—the matter of retrenchment. We would especially recommend, for their imitation, the basis upon which retrenchment in the sister Province is being carried out. In the matter and in the manner of the retrenchment resolved upon by Otago there is conveyed to Nelson a lesson which both the authorities and the people would do well to read, mark, and inwardly digest. The present Government of Otago Province had already done much towards retrenchnent in their departmental expenditure, and, in doing so, it must be confessed they took the initiative with the Gold-fields Department. So, it may be said, have the Nelson Government. But the comparison is odious. la aiming at retrenchment in the Southern Province, the Government sought also to increase the adapt-

ability of each branch of the civil serviceto itsproperwork. Wardens and other officers, at no time the human limpets that they are here, were made, if possible, moro peripatetic. There was organised the machinery for the law being brought to the miners, instead oftheininersbeingbroughtto "the counter " of the law. In Nelson the only properly peripatetic officer—the Commissioner—was removed, and no provision whatever has been made for the discharge of those of his duties which the Resident Magistrates and Wardens cannot possibly undertake, fixed in one locality and fully engaged as they already are. In proportion to the change, or rather the improvement, in this respect in Otago, there was an increase in the serviceable character of the survey staff and of the police, with a monetary saving. In Nelson, in these particulars, there has been retrogression, with what increase of efficiency or reduction of cost has yet to be seen. But it is the feature of the Otago system of retrenchment that, if it included the Goldfields, it did not end there, as it seems to do in Nelson. A perusal of the figures quoted elsewhere shows that the Superintendent of Otago and his right-hand man, the Provincial Treasurer, have not limited the excision of offices and expenses to the goldfields or the rural districts, but have exercised the same retrenchment at head-quarters —in Dunedin itself. It is in this particular that the Nelson Government have yet to follow their example. The mere dispensing with the services of a Scab Inspector at Nelson is scarcely proportionate to the saving'attetnptedonthe goldfields by the cessation of the office of Commissioner, by the reduction of the police force, and by the placing of the survey staff on an eminently unsatisfactory footing. There are other virtues besides charity which should begin at home, and we shall only bo prepared to believe in the sincerity of tho Nelson Executive in the matter of retrenchment when they direct their attention to other sections of the civil service than those that are represented only on the West Coast. If retrenchment has been necessary on the goldfields, there can be little difficulty in demonstrating that it is infinitely more necessary in "Nelson and its suburbs."