DEMOCRATIC CORRUPTION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 933, 17 January 1890, Page 29

DEMOCRATIC CORRUPTION.

Taking the United States as an example, the freer the political institutions the greater the corruption. We

are familiar enough with tales of gross jobbery perpetrated in the big centres of the States, and Ave have also heard a great deal of similar malpractices in connection with the manner in which Imperial contracts are executed in England, especially in the preparation of warlike munitions : leaden swords and bayonets, adulterated gunpowder, and scamped cannons. Roguery seems to be rampant in trade and commerce in certain quarters, and only extreme vigilance can control it. And now we hear of scandalous jobbery in connection with the building of the English State schools. The most shameful imperfections have been discovered in them. Mortar that was not mortar at all, but a “dark substance resembling mud,” was used, and some of the new buildings had to be shored up very soon after they were taken over. Contracts amounting to nearly L 3,000,000 are involved in all this. And now a thorough inspection of the London Board’s schoolhouses has been instituted, and an English paper, commenting on it, says :—“These huge contracts are the danger of our/municipal life, and the systems of accepting the lowest ten dor directly provokes contractors to obtain profits, impossible out of the prices, by scamping their work.”