Untitled

New Zealand Herald, Volume XI, Issue 6929, 1 February 1884, Page 4

It is a melancholy thing- that a k proportion of the efforts in public iff 9 must be directed to prevent the n petration of wrongs. If it were nnf for the energy so wasted, real would be accelerated manifold ""R 8 ordinary principles of honesty " w WI control men's actions in private l'f appear to be abandoned in public li/ without compunction, and people of the-most blameless private charactp when invested with public trusts an! pear thereupon to be bereft of coa science. Often enough have we bW up the voice of denunciation agai n3t the tendency to filch away the pubH reserves; but the most impudent and barefaced attempt of the kind that has been made for many a day is the present one to surrender the finest portion of the Domain to a private club. I mp „ dent in itself, it has been impudently gone about, and if the thing and the manner of it do not arouse the public to* sweep away the Domain Board, and have the administration of that valuable but miserably mjj. managed reserve placed in the hands of responsible men, then do citizens deserve to lose their recreation grounds The wretched thing about these nomi'. nated Boards is that they are generally stuffed with people who have never been chosen by the people, and entrusted with any representative position, and who accordingly have neither sense of public responsibility nor any sympathetic accord with popular feelings. These appointments are usually the consolation stakes of public life given to those who are out of the run! ning, and who because of some incompatibility would never be heard of in public life but for these convenient appointments. They are not all of this class, but it comes to the same thing, for these are usually in such preponderance of numbers that they dominate their more reasonable colleagues; and so vioious is the force of evil associations, that even sensible men, ordinarily amenable to the claims of public interests, appear to lose all sense of responsibility when appointed to seats on these nominated Boards. These accursed anachronisms of irresponsible Boards are the bane and the bother of public life. They are generally as stubborn as mules, and from having never been tempered by seeking popular suffrage, they seem to take a fiendish delight in resisting the popular wishes merely for the pleasure of baulking the people. We are perfectly sure that the whole of the people, barring the fewinterested, will feel indignant at this attempt to hand over a portion of the public Domain to the cricketers. It was already determined by the Board virtually to ignore the request, but the indecent persistency of the cricketers has triumphed for the moment, and without notice the resolution has been rescinded, and it has been agreed to recommend the Governor to lease to the cricketers, for their exclusive use, the only portion of that public recreation ground that is fitted, because of its level character, for public sports. We do not hesitate to say that the public of Auckland do not deserve to have the enjoyment of their public rights if they tolerate this unwarranted procedure. Who are the cricketers 1 Simply a very small section of the community -who, by the kindly encouragement given to them by the public, have formed an overweening estimate of their own importance, and have positively come to think they are the public itself; and they appear to be too mean withal to put their hands in their own pockets and purchase or lease a piece of land for their sports, and must needs, in the most underhand way, and by buttonholing the members of this irresponsible Board, filch a playground from the public. Talk about the manliness that athletic sports bring! Cricketing, at least, has become a thing of gate-money; but there is a depth lower still, and the Auckland cricketers appear to have reached it now. Why have they not the manliness to go and get a bit of land for themselves 1 As for the Domain Board, we are quite sure that expostulation will be lost on them, and therefore, we make no appeal. There are a few on that Board who are manfully standing up for the rights of the people; and the thanks of the public are due to Mr. Mackechnie, Mr. Peacock, and Mr. Walker for their efforts; but they are overwhelmed by • the preponderance of the irresponsible class; and the same disastrous elements which ruined the Albert Park, plunged it into a quagmire of debt, alienated the greater part to ease the consequence of their wretched and extravagant squandering, and then perforce handed over the fragments of a fine property to the City Council, who have changed it into the beautiful little Park which citizens enjoy to-day —the self-same elements are now in full play for the destruction of the Domain, and will succeed in this unless they are arrested by force from without. No one can S3y where this will end. If granted to the cricketers, another part by parity of reason should be given to the footballers, another to the tennis players, and other bits to every separate section of tie people who wish to amuse themselves and shut out everybody else. And just as the bowlers have seized a part of the Domain, and, by a quirk of law, hold it against all the world for their own amusement, resting tneir claim not on honest rights of ownership, but bravely on the fact of possession, so these worthy cricketers attempt to set up a claim to the Cricket Ground, on the fact of their having expended money on improving it tor their own purposes and pleasure. The scandalous negligence which allowed the Bowling Green to be filched from the public, bv mere lapse of time, » paralleled, if'not exceeded, by toe wilful negligence to the public interest, and malfeasance in a public trust, wi which the majority of the Domain Board are attempting to g» ve **?' what does not belong to them. To tea

Domain Board, as we have said we need make no appeal. Happily, the cowers of leasing cannot be delegated to them by the Governor, and His Excellency in Council alone has the power to assign away this public estate. ■\Ve are very much pleased to see that the Mayor has acted -svith great promptitude in arresting the hand of ihe Governor, and that the spirit of the City Council has backed him up, and that notice has been given for immediate consideration of the propriety of askin" that the Domain be handed over to the City Council. In this the Mayor and Council will have the hearty sympathy and support of the people. The past administration of the Domain has been in the highest degree discreditable, and this last attempted coup de main has shown the Board to be utterly unfit to be entrusted with such a charge.