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Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1184, 12 June 1874, Page 2

There has been another expose of the loose method of conducting public business in Westland. The Provincial Auditor has brought up his report wherein he says " Tho deposit account; which is composed of moneys deposited by contractors and others, is in such an incomplete state that it is quite impossible to tell by whom and for what purpose tho moneys have been deposited. In justice to the provincial Treasurer, I may state that this state of affairs has not been brought about during his term of office ; but, from what I can discover, the account had been irregularly kept for some time previously. Instead of the deposits being taken charge of by tho Treasurer, as at one time was the practice, the duty, for some unexplained cause, has been performed by (ho late County Secretary, and no cash-books appear to have been kept, or moneys banked when received, as should have been the case."

The Grey Kiver Argus ask?, " who is responsible for this abominable neglect of duty: and by whose authority was the deposit account removed from the care of the proper Treasury officer ? and maintains that the Auditors' report is " a complete justification of the course pursued by the Provincial Council in appointing an Executive, for under proper departmental supervision the laches of the County Secretary would have been impossible." The Register also raising objections -to the contemplated absence of the Provincial Treasurer during the sitting of the General Assemblj - , says, if additional argument is required against such absence it is supplied by the report of the Provincial Auditor as read in the Council. "It has been our lot to hear and to peruse a considerable number of such reports at one time or another, but we have never heard one so entirely condemnatory of a system, or lack of system, as the report to which we allude. It remains then for the Council to decide whether, in the face of all this confusion to be arranged, and arrears to be brought up, they will initiate a new era in the Provincial Treasury, by allowing the Treasurer, who has been appointed to reform theso things, to take himself off to Wellington immediately upon his assumption of office."