Letter of Mr. Sinclair to Lord Stanley. (From the New Zealand Journal.)

Daily Southern Cross, Volume I, Issue 19, 26 August 1843, Page 3

Letter of Mr. Sinclair to Lord Stanley. (From the New Zealand Journal.)

That her Majesty's representative in this colony has, by his acts — which have been characterized by no other objects than to enrich a few private favourites of his own by the creation of a multiplicity of offices at tho expense of the community at large — by his enormous expenditure, which has been in a great measure laid out on himself in tho mere decoration of tho temporary Govern-ment-house hei'e, which he now inhabits, and the tenantless one at the Bay of Islands is now destroyed by fire, — and ruling as the head of a faction or 'family compact' instead of at the head of the people at large — entirely lost the confidence of the majority of tho settlers in this colony, is a fact which admits of no dispute. If proof were wanting, it may be found in the numerous petitions, memorials, and letters, which must have been frequently pouring in upon your lordship from every corner of these islands, calling your attention to and complaining of the present state of 1 affairs, which has been brought about entirely by the impolicy of the Local Government in having acted in direct opposition to the instructions of her Majesty and Lord John Russell. Had I found any disposition on the part of his Excellency Captain Hobson to listen to tho just complaints of the settlers here, I should not have had oscasion to troubleyour lordship ; but his Excellency has invariably treated the most respectable settlers all over this colony, who dare to have an opinion of their own which may happen to differ from his, with such marked uncourtcousness, incivility, indignity, and disrespect, receiving their communications without frequently deigning even to give a reply, that I am compelled, however reluctantly, to obtrude myself upon your lordship \s attention. The large expenditure of the local government, and the misapplication of their funds, is, however, the ground on which more discontent than any thing else arises. ' It would appear from a table which I have the honour to enclose, in enclosure No. 1, that the Government of tliis Colony has already received (and spent nearly all of it) in little more than two years, nearly £130,000. This, of course, I can only calculate from conjecture, his Excellency having taken care to suppress, for reasons best known to himself, the different items of his past receipts and expend iture. The colony, there can be no doubt,has already had a large debt saddled on it,

to the amount of £68,000, without any benefit having arisen to it from emigration. The colonists were also led to suppose from the tenor of Lord John Russell's despatch to Captain Ilobson, dated 9th December, 1840, clause 3rd, that the utmost possible parsimony and frugality would be observed, and that the public health and safety would precede every other care. Instead, however, of the estimates here being framed on an economical system, they have been modelled on those of Van Diemen's Land, one of the most expensive of the British colonies. Referring to the estimated expenditure for 1842 of the new and adjacent colony of South Australia, which has now a population of 15,000 inhabitants, I find that £34,000 is the estimated expenditure for the current roar, as laid on the table of the Legislative Council there by his Excellency Governor Grey ; while in New Zealand, with a population of only half that number, the estimated expenditure is £56,000. The difference hr the mode of expenditure is what I am most anxious to call your Lordship's attention to. The most striking contrast is perhaps in the amount spent by the Governor of South Australia on himself during the year, viz. : Salary of his Excellency, South Australia, £800— establishment £350— £1,150. Salary of his Excellency, Auckland, £1,200 —establishment £1,279—2,479. But besides this sum, his Excellency Captain Hobson is chargeable with the following items also — Expenses of the colonial brig "Victoria," (a more yacht) £1,508 0 4 Superintendent of his Excellency's stock, horses, carts, &c. ; daily employed drawing wood and stone to Government house „. 615 0 0 And the amount his Excellency proposes laying out this year in his gardens, which is the only public work mentioned in the estimates, and on his kitchen and other work connected with his house, £L,539 ; making a total of upward of £6,000 ; besides which, up to a recent period, the colony has been burdened with a horse police, who, during the time they were here, did no other duty but act as orderlies to his Excellency, and have for the last two years cost upwards of £1,000 a year. It will no doubt bo urged upon your Lordship, that New Zealand having been colo.nized in so many different parts, the expenditure of the Government must of necessity bo larger than that of South Australia. The whole expenses of all the settlements in New "•Zealand, Auckland excluded, are, however, only £14,000 a year ; and-in South Australia, the settlement of Port Lincoln and the sources of the Sturt are also a considerable burden on the public revenue. The great difference, however, in the estimates is caused by the large establishment kept up here. I have, in enclosure No. 2, which I have the honour to enclose., contrasted the cxpences of sixteen of the principal departments here with the like ,in South Australia. In the former, these expences are £26,000 per annum ; in the latter, £13,000 only. Several other departments, which do not exist in South Australia, are enormously expensive hero ; for example, the Commissioners of Claims, which cost £2,435 per annum, an amount which has been greatly increased by his Excellency having appointed two extra Commissioners instead of only the one appointed by her Majesty, as directed by Lord John Russol in his despatch dated 16th April 1841. One of those appointed by his Excellency has so far mixed himself up with the Government against the colonists, by suppressing the only independant newspaper existing in the colony, that several of the land claimants have written to his Excellency on the subject, and have refused to lay their claims before any person but the one Commissioner appointed by her Majesty. Officers have also been created either before they were wanted —as in the ease of the Registrar-General for Deeds, whose appointment from his Excellency to that office bears date sth January, 1842, although up to the present date there have been no deeds registered, nor is there any place to register them in ; or, in cases where, in other colonies, two offices are held by one gentleman, as Private Secretary and Clerk of the Councils, Registrar of the Supreme Court and .Registrar of Deeds — an example set also by your Lordship on a recent occasion by annexing the office iQf Postmaster-General here, without salary, to that of Collector of Customs — his Excellency'^ love of patronage, having so many friends to provide for, has induced him. to" appoint one person to each office, j The great expense of the different departrnents here is caused by the number of clerks allowed to each office ; in many instances the sons and relations of other officers holding place under the Government, whose youth would disqualfy them from holding similar situations elsewhere. By that means, the salary of one individual, though apparently .mo derate, is unreasonable "with the addition

of the salaries of some two or three relations. It would be invidious in me in the latter instance to mention names, and impossible to show with accuracy the offices they are in, no account of the names of the gentlemen drawing salaries having boon printed by his Excellency, as is the case in other colonies. Some gentlemen, I understand, are holding two offices, and receiving pay for both. A family compact thus constituted, must, from the very nature of Colonial government, soon acquire the entire direction of affairs, holding as they do the most lucrative appointments ; and, by a system of his Excellency, by which they acquire lands upon different terms than the other colonists, they have acquired and continue to acquire the most valuable lands in the colony. Having acquired this predominance, future Goyernors, like the present, will have to submit quietly to their iufiuence, or, after a short and unavailing struggle, will have to yield to this well-organised party the real conduct of affairs. " A large portion of the money expended here has been laid o$ L , on the temporary Go-vernment-house, a building originally brought from England, and cost £2,000, and which was originally intended for a Governmenthouse and public offices ; which, with the additions his Excellency has made to it, has cost the colony £12,000, a sum far exceeding what the colony could afford. Some attempt has, I understand, been made to gloss over and reduce this extravagant sum by debiting other buildings with some of the money laid out on this, making the whole cost of the house only £4,000. My information having been gathered from the most unquestionable authority, is not likely to be incorrect. In fact, the very servants' rooms and kitchens of his Excellency are proverbial throughout the colony as being more, extraI vag-antly fitted up, and costing more money than any gentleman's house in the island. In the same way, the garden of his Excellency has been most expensive ; the very walks of which are paved with stone, before even so much has been done in the principal streets of Auckland, which are now impracticable even for foot passengers. "Whether the colonists have a right to complain of these superfluities, it will bo for your lordship to determine, or whether they are to submit patiently any longer and labor under such injustice. A similar attempt to -the former has been'made in the estimates, where is a charge ' to J. R. Clendon on account of rent of buildings at Okcato, £1,000,"' — which was for no such thing : the money having been paid for interest on the sum duo to him by his Excellency, or as part payment. " Your lordship might suppose that the Legislative Council would be some check on the expenditure, of the colony. The gentlemen holding a seat in the Council, like those in the Magistracy, are those who are in general most notorious for their subserviency to the Government, and men wholly irresponsible to the people ; in the case of the Magistracy, many of them persons whose station in life and education would have excluded them from a similar office at home, and so far from the members of Council being unconnected with the Government, one of them, although not holding an appointment from the Governor, yet having ten thousand pounds due -to him from Government, could hardly be called an independent or fit member to represent the people. With a Council composed of such -materials, it can be no" wonder that his Excellency took the earliest opportunity of dismissing the only j member who had the confidence of the colony, and who dared to oppose him, (I refer to my esteemed friend George Butler Earp, Esq.,) and the comparative ease with which he got the Council to agree to grant to one ' of its members ten thousand acres in the immediate neighbourhood of Auckland, ofj which grant several members of the Council J have since purchased a share. His Excellency has observed the same unconstitutional line ! of conduct with regard to the Magistracy as to Mr. Earp, by removing every Magistrate ■who attends a public meeting against any act, however unjust, of his Excellency — as in the case of Captain Daniell and Mr. Moreing, of Port Nicholson, — gentlemen, as regards talent and education, birth and property, inferior to none in -the colony. When such appointments are left to a person who himself would not hold the office in England, it is not to be wondered at that personal animosity aud party pique should have their fair share of weight. As regards the expenditure of the colony, £40,000 out of £50,000 is spent in Auckland alone, which has only a population of 1,500 inhabitants. The difference of the annual expenditure for printing in this colony, viz. £1,500 per annum, and that of South Australia, £3G2 per annum, is most striking. The large expenditure for that purpose has been caused by the Government, to rid itself of tho only liberal [newspaper here, having first suppressed it, and then purchased the whole of the material with which it was printed for £1,425 for the

purpose of printing a Government newspaper, which is now done with the Government press ; and by the speeches of the Council being printed at the expense of the colony, a system hitherto unheard of in even the British parliament. With such an extravagant expenditure, it will not have surprised your Lordship, that, notwithstanding the loan I from New South Wales of £43,000, the Government should have been driven to the ; desperate alternative of either drawing treasury bills of £25,000 or becoming bankrupt. 1 am not aware that I can point out to your Lordship a more marked instance of the useless expenditure of this Government than the Colonial Storekeeper's department, which is kept up here at the expense of £460 per annum. Besides tho storekeeper himself, there is a clerk and an issuer. The store itself is in such a dilapidated state as to be unfit for the reception of dry goods ; and several hundred pounds worth of flour, bis- j cuit, &c., have been damaged in it. There | has not been for some time £200 worth of stores in it ; the wholo of the provisions, slops, &c, being issued by tho contractors direct to tho surveying parties, mechanics, boats* crews, &c, as well as the barter of the Aborigines. In the same manner, the chief protector of Aborigines, with his aUowance for a clerk, six native servants, forage for a horso, his salary, travelling and incidental expences, is in the receipt himself of £1,390 per annum ; and if any thing is required for the natives, it is only to be sent for, and charged to the Aborigines account ; a very convenient one for all parties. Having now brought under the consideration of your Lordship some of the most prominent features of the injuducious expenditure of his Excellency, I trust you will see the necessity of immediately appointing some officer of accounts, with a view to checking such proceedings in future, over which hitherto there has been no controul, as the accounts ! have now only to pass'tlie mere review of the Colonial Secretary. In order that your Lordship may not be led away by the statement that this colony is necessarily more expensive than South Australia in consequence of a large police force which has to be kept up at every settlement in this island, I have tho honor to annex, in enclosure No. 3, a comparative statement of the police force in South Australia and New Zealand for 1842 ; by which you will perceive, that in the former colony the expenses for that service are £1,400 ayear in excess of that of tho latter. The Government party having the .ascendancy here arc constantly abusing thoir power by different modes of loqal jobbing. If any public building, wharf, or other improvement is to be made, it is always erected merely with reference to a bay called "Official Bay," where the whole of the waterfrontage is exclusively held by Government Officers ; and which his Excellency selected for their private residences, remarking at the time, that the water-frontage there was of no value for commercial purposes, but which he jiow terms, (replying to a memorial from sixty-eight of the principal merchants and other residents in Auckland, requesting that the custom-house might bo erected where the whole of the business of the town is carried on,) one of the two 'principal waterfro.ntages of the town.' At tho sale of town lands here, another situation was pointed out by the Surveyor- General as the reserve for a custom-house, on the strength of which several parties purchased land in its neighbourhood, never supposing that the Government should be guilty of afterwards changing the position, more especially as, in the latter instance, the site has been chosen without any regard to the eligibility of its situation, either for tho purpose proposed, or with reference to the interests of the colony at large, other than that of enhancing the value of the property of the proprietors. The inhabitants of Auckland, having memorialized the Governor on various points, and no concessions having ever been made to any of their solicitations, have come to the determination in future, of memorializing the Home Government direct on the subject of any complaint. i