THE GOVERNOR'S SALARY AND RETRENCHMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 7174, 30 March 1887, Page 4

THE GOVERNOR'S SALARY AND RETRENCHMENT.

[Special to the Stab.]

WELLINGTON, March 30,

The ‘ Post ’ characterises the proposal to reduce the Governor’s salary as one of those savings which the Colony cannot afford to make, as it would advertise us throughout the Empire as a poverty-stricken community, and to lower our status in the ranks of the colonies. At present we are in the second if not in the first rank on the Colonial Office list, and, as a result, we have able and experienced men as a rule sent to govern us. If we reduced the Governor’s salary wo should have to be content with inferior and second-class men. The Governor receives L 7,500 a-year, out of which he has to maintain the Government House establishment, pay his own and his staff’s travelling expenses when absent from Wellington, pay L3OO a-year to the clerk of the Executive Council, maintain a messenger at Ll5O a-year, and pay the salaries of his private secretary and one or more A.D.C.s. The actual amount left after all expenses are paid must be very small indeed. The expense of keeping up the domestic establishment at Government House must be very considerable. It is a large place, and requires a large number of servants. The Governor must necessarily entertain to a considerable extent, not only the'resideuts of Wellington or wherever he is residing, at entertainments of one kind or another, out members of the Legislature doting the session and distinguished visitors from abroad, the number of whom is steadily increasing every year, and to provide accommodation for whom must be no alight tax on the occupant of Government House. As to the talk about needy noblemen being sent out to the colonies to make money, it is all nonsense. The possible profit- to bo made out of a colqnial Governorship by any Governor, however mean, must be very small indeed. If some Governors have tried,to save, others have spent largely from their private , fortunes. We are not quitp sure which class is the worst., Jt ia a very bad

example to colonial society to have at its head an extravagant Governor. It encourages a style of high and fast living, which likely produces most disastrous results. The salary of a Governor should be sufficient to enable him to maintain liberal but not lavish hospitality; to keep up the positipn of the first gentleman in the Colony, and to set a good social example to the community. The present salary is not more than sufficient to provide for the discharge of these duties, and our present Governor shows an excellent example of how they can be performed in a graceful and unpretending manner. It is of the utmost importance, politically and socially, that the Governor of this Colony should be a first-class man, and if we want a firstclass Governor and to rank as a first-class colony we must be content to pay a firstclass salary. If we get what we pay for we should be content, and with a couple of exceptions we have had no reason to complain of our New Zealand Governors. To compare the expenditure required officially from a Premier, a Minister, a Chief Justice, or a Judge with that demanded from a Governor of the Colony is absurd. It should be remembered that all these functionaries draw travelling expenses on a liberal scale, and have private secretaries, messengers, etc., paid for them, while the Governor’s so-called salary of L 7,500 includes everything.