EDITORIALS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 810, 9 September 1887, Page 27

EDITORIALS.

* Another View. Thebe is one aspect of the Betrenchment question which has generally escaped the attention due to its real importance. Usually the question is approached as if it were solely one of economy of saving so much money,, or spending so much. less. This no doubt is a sufficiently urgent side of the case. The need of rigid thrift is now so imperative that it has at last even forced itself on the attention of the New Zealand public and of the present Government. Hitherto the demand on the part of the public for greater economy in the administration of the- country’s affairs has been only a desultory clamour for economy in the abstract. Directly it has been reduced to the concrete, and its practical application attempted in the way of curtailing various little luxuries to which the public may have become used, or of dismissing officers and labourers whose services can readily be dispensed with, there has been a prompt remonstrance of so per emptory a character that the representatives in the first instance and the Government in the second, have incontinently given way to the pressure, and so real retrenchment has remained a mere Utopian dream. But at last the people of New Zealand do seem to have been brought to recognise the urgency of the need of administrative economy, and to resolve that it shall be brought about by hook or by crook. And the Colonial Treasurer, of all men in the world, has been the instrument of their conversion. They were staggered by his tariff of 1885, including the 50 per cent increase in the tea duties, but the prompt abandonment of that scheme, and the absence in 1886 of any farther attempt reassured them, and they hoped things were not so bad as represented by the Opposition. The Budget of 1887 awoke them with a sudden and profound shock to a full perception of the financial abyss into which the Colony was drifting. They could stand a good deal, but they could not stand that Budget with its tremendous load of additional taxation. They saw that if Sir Julius Vogel, with all his love of making things nice and Dleasant and his ever-sanguine temperament, considered matters so bad as to demand such a fearfully drastic remedy, they must be bad indeed, and there must be a necessity for stringent reform such as was never seriously dreamt of before. And hence has arisen that “ perfect roar ” for retrenchment to which the Premier recently referred. But if the public were slow to be convinced, the present Government were still slower. It is quite remark able to look back over their successive utterances on the subject, beginning with Sir Julius Vogel’s letter to the Hall Government and his Ashburton speech, and following up the series through the declaration that retrenchment was impossible: that it was impracticable without imparing ' the efficiency of the public service ; that it was only feasible to the extent of :£30,000 or £40,000 ; that it could be carried out to the amount of £70,000 or ,£SO,OOO ; that it had been effected to the tuneof nearly£loo,ooo,aud that further reductions of £150,000 could be made : to the present attitude of Ministers, which, as we understand it, is that savings can and shall be made to any amount that the public may demand as the condition of Ministers’ retention of office. This is an interesting and notable conversion. The phase of Retrenchment often ignored i 3 its valuable and remedial agency against the corruption which is fast becoming the chronic condition of New Zealand politics. It has been the public carelessness which has facilitated and encouraged this political vice. Nay, more, the vice lias been directly fostered by the public, who have insisted on lavish local expenditure, and on an unlimited supply of “ billets ” being forthcoming for relatives and friends. Pressure has been exercised by constituents on members, and by members on Ministers, and so there has been a constant creation of needless departments and appointments, and a continuous outpouring of public money on local works whose utility is doubtful, and whose construction was at the best premature. There has thus been a perpetual vicious circle of corruption, which has enclosed our whole political life and grown into an evil of the most formidable magnitude. By no ordinary means can this evil he met and cured. The mere attempt would,

in ordinary circumstances, wreck the strongest Ministry. But there is now a hopeful prospect of its being cured by the wholesome, although disagreeable, starvation process, which modern physicians apply so successfully to the dyspeptic victims of gorging. Under a rigorous system of retrenchment, tbe path of corruption will be barred, and if the salutary result is the radical cure of New Zealand’s besetting political vice, the necessity which has compelled such a reform will have been indeed a blessing in disguise.