PUBLIC OPINION.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 12, Issue 976, 8 September 1868, Page 2

PUBLIC OPINION.

Sic, — Your correspondent James Hawthorne, no doubt expressing the opinions of himself and neighbours, brings very serious charges against Col. Whitmore's conduct of the late unfortunate campaign after the escaped Hauhaus ; and in so doing Hawthorne endeavours to raise public opinion against that high officer. There are, however, too sides to every question, and so far wo of this Province have only heard one, as given by your correspondent. Admitting that to be perfectly true, it unfortunately happens

that, however strongly public opinioit may be expressed and felt upon n46st matters, upon public servants that dbstrac i tion falls very lightly indeed-. An official of any sort, to be worth his salt to hi 3 inferiors, must be perfectly indifferent to 1 the opinions of the unofficial vulgar and any expression of dissatisfaction against his conduct by the uncir cumcised is treated •by him with unqualified disdain. The same influence which is strong enough to place a man in a situation which he is riot fitted to fill, is quite strong enough to keep him there whether he be popular or not. It is the privilege of a Government to create officers, and it is hardly likely that (except in cases of attempt at free action) it will readily knock down graven images of its own making ; such conduct would be establishing a very dangerous principle or precedent. The slaughter of a few hundred citizens, the devastation of fertile provinces, the ruin of industrious families, has before now arisen in this unhappy country from official mismanagement, and will happen, again and again from the same cause, so long as important offices aro filled by mere political partisans and not by proper men. The faint expression of public opinion which occasionally finds vent in the press' is perfectly powerless against the determination of the Government to wink upon, the doings of its servants. A Government officer in New Zealand is like a Lama in Thibet, a sacred institution — a man not to be profanely looked upon, much less spoken against, by the common herd. His acts are not as our acts, his ways are not as our ways — which perhaps is fortunate, at all events as far as our private interests are concerned. It is quite a mistake to suppose that because in theory we live under a free constitution and electoral Government, that in practise we actually do so. Our Government, in its own small and petty way, is highly despotic, and will put down, and keep down by the sti'ong hand if necessary, any expression of opinion against its acts, or the acts of its servants. Incompetency, arrogance, ignorance, injustice — all these things, and many more equally bad, have been laid to the charge of scores of officials time out of mind, with no corrective result whatever; and, so far from thai; kind of talk heaping coals of fire upon the offending official head, it has rather the contrary effect of turning those hot coals into a. sort of smoky halo of martyrdom, such as you see round the heads of distinguished characters in old prints, going like respectable lambs in highly-colored garments to the stake— only that, with this difference in the case of our officials, they are going, after judgment, in the most fashionable attire, not to the stake de facto, but to the stake dejure, or, in other words, to their salaries, with a very meek and resigned aspect. Thousands of pounds are squandered away annually by incompetent public serTauts ; whole departments are turned into private offices and agency shops, to the damage of private interests ; and, in short, a very loose condition of things pervades most public departments. But it is perfectly useless to kick up a row about it. The maternal wing of high officialdom is. spread over the little official chickens, and they defy with edifying bravado all the radical, ruffianly hawks, in or out of the press, to touch them. Instead of a public meeting being called for the main purpose of censuring the Government for its conduct in letting those Hauhaus get away, we meet and merely listen to a quantity of sanctimonious driVel, and are requested to " fork up," for the erection of a monument to our dead. Our dead ! What did they die of? They died like brave men in a bad cause — in.the cause of irresponsible officialdom — and many more will be called to the same account yet. A monument erected to their memory will also be a monument erected to that official incapacity which killed them. Let it stand for ever, that generations vet unborn may know how and what for th"eir fathers died. ' Old colonists may starve, while offices which they are quite competent to fill, and have a certain right to claim, by virtue of long years spent in the country, are given to new-comers, whose recommendation is only that they are new-comers. Until a perfectly different era in official matters turns up, Mr. Hawthorne may sow, and Mr. anybody else may water, but officials will be officials, and nothing else, for ever, and two or three days over. — I am, &c, A Public Opinion.