The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Tuesday, August 7, 1888. FLEECING THE TAXPAYERS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 179, 7 August 1888, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Tuesday, August 7, 1888. FLEECING THE TAXPAYERS.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s, Thy God’s, and truth’s.

When one gets a fair idea of how the political strings are worked in this unfortunate colony it is the easiest thing imaginable to account for the shameful way in which a district like our own may be, and in our case most certainly has been, neglected. Here we are now with the serious question before us as to whether we shall discontinue a work which, had there in the past been the nearest approach to political honesty, would monetarily never have troubled us in the least. What a comparison is disclosed to us in another direction ? We find that a determined minority of the House feel compelled to stretch their constitutional privileges in order to prevent the carrying out of one of the monstrous proposals that have disgraced our political records. We refer .to the Otago Central Railway Bill. We are

crying out about retrenchment; the country, it has been said, is howling for a decrease of the enormous expenditure ; unfortunate Civil servants have been getting their wretched pittances still further reduced, or being sent adrift to compete with other workers, and yet we have this shameful spectacle of a most inquitous and monstrous measure being forced upon the House because there would be the risk of losing certain votes. “Thank Heaven,” as one journal puts it, “we have yet the Legislative Council to save the country from some of these vile jobs.” We may talk of the Councillors as pensioned fogies, but they earn their wages sometimes. The Council stepped in last session while the House made a fool of Mr Pyke-—if it were possible for that wily politician to be fooled in a matter in which he has so much interest. This session we must thank a valiant few, including the old veteran Sir George Grey. The Premier, with a timidity which showed the card he was playing, resorted to a most questionable and inconsistent course. Because the House in the previous session had affirmed the principle, he claimed that the Bill should have precedence on this occasion, yet he has always adopted an attitude the very reverse on Bills which had been brought in time after time by Sir George Grey. . Sufficient, however, has been said to show to what extent New Zealand politicians can truckle and intrigue in their disgraceful bartering for votes. Happily the object has in this case been defeated, but it is painful to contemplate that we can never anticipate sober prosperity and an earnest desire to redeem the colony from its humiliating condition, until we have disposed of all this wretched railway jobbery. Parties may play at seesaw, Atkinson may be in and Stout out, but it is always the same sad tale. But having mentioned Stout’s name, we cannot conclude without extolling his conduct in having denounced this railway affair from the beginning. The stonewalling proceedings were anything but a creditable scene, but it is a disgrace to our Parliamentary representatives as a body that they have not the courage to dispose once for all of an attempt —at such a time, too—to divert to a work which for years must entail loss to the colony, half a million acres of land giving a present revenue of £50, 000 a year. If ever there was a bare-faced attempt to plunder the public chest this was one, and the persistency with which it has been urged is a positive scandal.