The Daily Telegraph. SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 1883.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3632, 3 March 1883, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 1883.

TnE morbid fear thiit is entertained by " departments " lest departmental information should leak out and be made public affords the impression that the public service would gain and the departments lose if a little more daylight were let in. It has never been contended that it would be to the injury of the public service to allow civil servants to give what information they pleased to anybody who asked for it. But "public service" has two meanings—to the department it means the department, and to the public it means the service for which the public pays. Red-tape, sccresy, and officialdom generally, arc designed not for the good of the public, but for the support of the department. Without seurcsy bungling would be exposed; waste, extravagance, and inefficiency might be brought to light, and tyranny and injustieo suffered by subordinates at the hands of incompetent "chiefs" be made known. ISetul v\'nt iiioi should be the motto of departments, for their autocracy is hardly equalled by their arrogance. On entering the service of a department the newly tiedged civil servant is enjoined to keep his mouth shut. Nothing , must be known outside of what is going on inside. The country is governed by responsible institutions, and, perhaps, if too much were made public, responsibility might bo rather inconveniently felt. Official silence must therefore be strictly maintained, otherwise Ministers coidd not make blunders with comfort, and the chiefs of departments would be found to be but very ordinary mortals. A donkey in the gloom of a fog may be mistaken for a mysterious and awe-inspir-ing object.; so a donkey enjoys a fog. in much the same- way that a department has satisfaction in surrounding itself with mystery. The fact of the matter is a department would not be able to do what it likes if its workings were always open for public inspection. Exposure would ruin the best laid plans for the growth of a department, and administration would have to be conducted on business principles and by business people. That sort of thing would never do for a department. An order bearing the official stamp has lately been sent to all persons connected with the working of the railways, by which it has been proclaimed that any employe giving information to any person about the department, its Avorking, or its affairs, directly or indirectly, shall be liable to instant dismissal. One would think that the railways did not belong to the people, but were the private property of this most bungled of bungling departments. No such order as that would be required if there was nothing to be hidden of which the department is ashamed, and of which the public .should know.