The Waikato Times. SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 1879.

Waikato Times, Volume XIII, Issue 1109, 2 August 1879, Page 2

The Waikato Times.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 1879.

Equal and exact justice to all men, Of whatever state or persuasion, religious

or political. Here shall the Press the People's right

maintaiu, Unawed by infljAenoo and tmhribed by gain.

That there is room for reform in the Civil Service of New Zealand few will gainsay, though that service is now very differently constituted to what it was but a few years ago. Competitive examinations have done much towards, though, perhaps, they have not wholly succeeded in displacing favoritism and nepotism. There is a limit however to reform, and we could almost imagine that the following paragraph was the invention ot some enemy of the Premier, did it not come to us from a journal which is now more than ever his thorough going supporter. Thursday's ' Evening Star' contains the following under the head of " latest", from its special correspondent at Wellington, a permanent member, too, of its literary staff. "It is reported on good authority that Sir George Grey has expressed himself in favor of, amongst other reforms, a system obtaiuing in America, by which Civil servants are changed with every change of Government." If there is one feature in the American system of administration that is more objectionable than another it is the change of C ivil Servants with every Presidential election. It has become the fruitful source of jobbery and corruption. The thousands of offices vacated are made the .price of election patronage and tbe filling them again by the Administration the price of the elected ; while the Government service Kuffers by the appointment of men chosen not for fitness or experience, but for election and political support. The officers appointed aie not only unfit and inexperienced, but, knowing tbe. uncertainty of

tenure on wliich their appointments are held, feather their nests while they are able, and peculation and embezzlement become the rule. But democracy here, run mad, would go it seems a step further in New Zealand than even in the United States. The change of Civil Servants takes place there only after a President's election. Except in extraordinary cases the official has a four years tgrm of office and may become efficient before that term expires, but the proposal alluded to above goes beyond the American standard. It would make the change ot Civil Servants dependent on the fate of a Ministry. It is not easy to foresee the mischief to which a so-called reform of such a character as this would lead, indeed, the thing is so wholly preposterous, so out of consonance with the feelings of even the most advanced Liberals in the colony, that we could scarcely credit the Premier with any such intentions did they not come on the authority of an organ which is most friendly to himself and party. Liberal and advanced pi'inciples have surely but too many enemies to contend with that they should be thus handicapped. This so-called reform is a diseased political excresence which which has been generated by the unhealthy working of democracy in the United States, but is not byany means its natural and necessary outcome. We may hope in this colony, with the experiences of the New World beforo us, to enjoy the blessings while avoiding the evils of advanced Liberalism, but it would be worse than madness to adopt the latter before even we have fully entered upon the enjoyment of the former. To begin by engrafting such a reform, so to call it, upon the administrative service of the colony would really be to retard the development of those liberal principles which the majority of the colonists, we believe, desire to see blossom into fruit in New Zealand.