OUR PLAIN DUTY.

Evening Star, Issue 7247, 25 June 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

OUR PLAIN DUTY.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib,—As it is universally acknowledged that severe retrenc ment is positively necessary in all our Government administration, allow me to put before your readers and the country generally the best example of curtailing public expenditure that I know of. It was carried o«t by Sir George Grey (whom we expect to visit us) in' South Australia, after they bad gone bofrowed-money mad, as we have unfortunately done. In R. M. Martin’s “History of Australia*” Book IV., ch 1, p. 646, I read thus:— In July, 1841, Governor Grey met the Legislative Council with reduced Estimates, as follows i Reductions in 1841. 1812; Su vey and Land Department ..£14,850 £3,6811 .. ~ 6,927 860 Storekeepers .. .. 23,743 310 Police, Mounted and Foot .. 16.109 9*112 Customs Department .. 0,760 2,478 llatbor-masicrs .. .. .. 3.944 1,612 G'Ols 2,141 I.OM Port Lincoln 1,200 672 Totals £78,787 £10,178 The character of Governor Grey was manifested by the exercise of a wise statesmanship, and the firmness with which he resisted the clamorous demands made by tumuturns bodies of men using seditious language and marching in organised array to Government House, threatening the representative of their Sovereign, whom there was no military to protest. But these and other unjustifiable proceedings did net prevent the Governor contributing LMO fa one year to charitable purposes cut of hie limited income of LI,000 ; and, to his honor, it is recorded that veil poverty and distressed merit never in vain sought relit f. Here, then, we have an instance of one bm (and a very young man) going to a young insolvent colony, and at once reducing the expense of governing the colony to less than threee-fonrtbs, and being patriot enough to give fur-tenths of his own salary to the destitute at the same time. I would respectfully submit, since we are just about selecting representatives to legislate in the present critical state of the Colony, that if we cannot get sea iu whom we can place confidence, who wiU pleige themselves to do all they can to reduoa the cost of governing this Colony by at leant one-half, that the taxpayers should cease to pay any more property taxes until they can be shown that we are being governed at a not greater expense than the revenue, and not at the coat of the borrowed money, as we have been doing, which must lead in a very few years to national insolvency.—l am, eto, A Taxpayer. Dunedin, June 23.