THE FITZ-GERALD JOB.

New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator, Volume IV, Issue 266, 26 July 1843, Page 3

THE FITZ-GERALD JOB.

Perhaps the most unblushing job which has been ventured on by the Auckland Government, though not the mest remarkable in a pecuniary view, is the Fitz-gerald or Auckland Registrars Job. One of the New Zealand Ordinances enacts, that all deeds relating to lands shall, with a few exceptions, be registered ; and it provides an extensive and expensive system for carrying its object into execution. This system consists in the establishment of a Registrar in each district, with as many clerks and subordinates as he may think proper to appoint, no, limit- being placed to ■ their number, but all payable out of the public purse. The appointment of the Registrars rests with the Governor ; the appointment of the inferior officers is subject to his approval, which, of course, is the same thing as if he had the appointment. The Ordinance appears to have been passed in 1841 ; it is one of those which have two inconsistent dates, but this, we believe, is the correct one. No sooner was it passed than, as we learn from Mr. Sinclair's letter, Robert Fitzgerald, Esq., father-in-law to Mr. Willoughby Shortland, was appointed Registrar for the Auckland District, with a salary of £300 a-year. Up to this hour, not a single Register Office exists in the island ; not one deed has been registered, nor will one be registered till the Land Claims are settled, and the Crown grants made. Yet we are informed Robert Fitzgerald, Esquire, draws his salary with the sang froid of a man who had earned it. We happened to be in Court at a recent Criminal Sitting in this Borough, when a day labourer was indicted and tried for stealing two bagatelle balls, of the value we should think/ of tenpence or a shilling. It turned out that his little boy had found them in" the street, and the man was of course acquitted ; but had he been found guilty, he would, no doubt, have passed some weeks or months in gaol, while his wife and family would have been condemned to all the evils which necessarily fall upon the wife and family of a laboring man under such circumstances. Now supposing this poor man had been guilty, whether would he or Robert Fitzgerald, Esquire, have merited the most severe punishment. The one would have pilferred a paltry, article worth tenpence; the other has been extracting £300 a year from the public jpurse, for nearly two years past, under circumstances which make it extremely difficult for us to consider it in any other light than public robbery. When men commit a crime under shelter of the law or under cover of Government, and that on a. large scale, their iniquity passes for nothing ; but when the delinquent has the meanness to commit a small crime, upon his own responsibility, the gaol or the convict gang are his allotted portion. What are the Government Officers who live at Auckland about? Have they not the courage to remonstrate in our favour against such practices ? Do our Chief Justice, our Attorney-General, our Colonial Treasurer, never exert their influence to put a stop to such transactions ? They will say perhaps it is none of their affair. But does the law require every man to prevent a felony which he sees about to be committed, and command him if he can to arrest the felon, and shall these Government Officers be allowed to sit by and shut their eyes to such wholesale plunder, (£3OO a year and nothing for it,) under the excuse that it is none of their j affair ? What respect can the people have for a Judge or a Public Prosecutor, acting in the execution of his office and inflicting the sentence of the law on poor laboring men, whom poverty or bad example have tempted to crime, when they know that that Judge and Public Prosecutor- have sat bye in silence for nearly two years and winked at the commission of such things as we have, described? < Can any excuse be alleged for permitting an individual who does not render, nor ever has tendered, the state one farthing's worth of service in return for it, to put his hand deliberately into our pockets and extract from them three hundred a year ? Can any excuse be alleged for public officers sitting by and winking at such things ?