THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1888.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9201, 2 November 1888, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1888.

At last the vexing question of the Governor's salary has been settled, and a telegraphic message in another column tells us that a cablegram has been received by the Government from the Colonial Office saying that Her Majesty will be recommended to assent to the Governor's Salary Bill. This is the removal of a possible cause of friction between the Colonial Office and the colony ; but there are plenty of people in the colony who would have been glad if Her Majesty had been advised to put her foot firmly down, and if she had refused the lopping-otF of allowances, which reduces the Governor's salary from £7500 to £5000 a-year, it would have been such a well-merited snub to a parsimonious Parliament, and would have made the " skinflints" hide their diminished heads at the censure of their attempted meanness. Now let us consider for a moment the "meanness' , of this salary, which, in our severe economy, we are guilty of, in giving only £5000 a-year to the Governor. It is the same salary as that which is paid to Lord Salisbury for performing the rather responsible duties of Prime Minister of England and Secretary for Foreign Affairs. It is the same as that paid to the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Secretary for War, for the Home Department, for India, or even the Secretary for the Colonies, who selects and appoints the Governor; and it is much larger than the salary of the First Lord of the Admiralty and other magnates in the administration of the Government of an empire on which the sun ne% T er sets. Or, if we extend the comparison to the other side of the Atlantic, the salary of our Viceroy is more than three times the salary of the VicePresident of the United States, or of the Secretary of State, or of the Treasury, or of War, or of the Navy, or of the Interior. And when we consider the responsibilities of one of these, administering the interests not of a handful of half-a-million of people, but of sixty millions, so far from our being affected by a consciousness of meanness, we have more reason to be shocked at the extravagance. It is not in the least our desire or intention to reflect on the worthiness of the gentlemen who have occupied the high position of Governor of this colony, or even to charge them with having enriched themselves at our expense. On the contrary the salaries they have received have, as a rule, barely met their expenditure, and few colonial Governors have gone away richer than they came. And within the past few days the feelings of every right-minded colonist must have been pained by the pitiful scene of which we have heard from Queensland, in which the widow of the Governor of that colony, while the grave had barely closed over her husband, took the housekeeping books to the Premier to show him that not only had they expended the salary and allowances of office, but a considerable annual sum besides. And why this painful exhibition ? To defend the character of her deceased husband from the charge of parsimoniousness. It was to show that they had rendered the tale of receptions, balls, and routs, which that limited circle which calls itself "society" demands as a duty to be rendered by Her Majesty's representative to the colony which he governs. Nobody claims that a Judge or a Resident Magistrate, or any other official, should expend his salary in such a manner. They are supposed to render services in their several offices to the value of their several salaries, and their salaries are paid them for the services rendered, and are to be expended on themselves and their families as they please, or to be saved if they prefer it, to make provision for their declining years. But it is obvious, indeed it is recognised—the prescriptive usage having been fixed by those interested from the earliest times—that a large portion, indeed, the principal portion, of a salai;v,is paid hjnj not fon

himself, but to be distributed for th delectation of those who are priviW !i to partake of his hospitality. Q, on u any more vicious or improper princirj] be conceived ? An exorbitant sum i' paid the Governor, taken from th taxation of the whole people, to be & pended in giving pleasure to a limited circle of a few hundreds, who arrogat to themselves the right to be feted f the public cost, and have the assuranc to maintain that this is rendering Se vice to the State. Does any one for a moment dare fn maintain that either the honour of H Majesty, or the welfare of her peopr is promoted by such expenditure ? f o ', one that shares in such festivity there are a thousand to whom j> is a matter o£ no concern; w Lil e even in the circles immediately affected it is more extensively produ t . tive of jealousy, envy, and heartburnings than it is of any access of loyalty to the Queen, or service to the public weal. When we know and admit that say, four out of these five thousand pounds are given for this purpose, there seems something grotesque in th« thought that the five or six hundred people guzzling good wines, and stuffing themselves with rich viands supplied for them by the suffering and burthened taxpayer, are profitable objects for such public expenditure ; and that the pleasing of these brings any adequate return to the general welfare. Anyone can see that such an arrangement as this emanates from the circle that is immediately and solely benefited and that the idea that Gubernatorial hospitality is service to the State, is eminently one-sided. When we consider the very limited circle that has any participation in the enjoyment of such expenditure, and the utter valuelessness of Government House hospitalities in influencing or modifying public sentiment, unless injuriously, we cannot but think that the time has come when this absurdity should end. The Governor should have an adequate salary for his services, and for that alone ; to be expended by him for his own purposes, as in the case of any other public official or private gentleman ; and the professional hangers-on of Government House should be brought to see that the public means to make no longer provision for their personal delectation, and that henceforth they must eat and drink at their own expense. When the widow of .••. Governor who seems to have been dono to death, brings her housekeeping books to prove that they had expended, not only the salary allowed by the State, but their own private fortune, in conciliating the hungry cormorants, that under the title of " society' , had been preying on the larder and cellars of Government House, it is time that the honest public without should protest against the absurd and unequal arrangement. Ninety out of a hundred of the people have no interest or desire to share in these things, and there is an indecency in the preposterous assumption that the providing of such panem et circenses to a limited circle of parasites and sycophants is in any sense a public service.