THE CIVIL SERVICE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4156, 16 July 1874, Page 2

THE CIVIL SERVICE.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Permit me, as one of the Civil Service Commissioners who made a report in 1866, to correct a mistake in your leading article of to-day. You state, in effect, that the Commissioners are responsible for recommending the commencement of a system of pension without deduction from salaries ; and, while acquitting them of self-interested motives, you are of opinion that they showed undue regard for the pecuniary interests of their fellow officers in making that recommendation. X wish to point out that the system of pensions, without deduction from salary, was established by the Legislature in 1858, and that such system was rendered in 1861 more favorable to civil servants (without, in either case, any preceding report from any Commissioners). What the Commissioners did in 1866 was to recommend the repeal, for the future, of the Acts of 1858 aud 1861, and the enactment of a pension scale on less favorable terms, so far as the pecuniary interests of civil servants are concerned. The scale recommended was the same as that in force in the English and Victorian Civil Services. The Commissioners recommended the continuance of the same practice, with regard to nondeduction from salary, which had existed in New Zealand from 1858 to the date of their Report.— l am, &c., W, Gisborne. TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —As you have an article in to-day’s paper commenting on the Civil Service Bill now before the House of Representatives, and, by the position you take up iu tendering advice to the members of the Civil Service, appear to take some interest in the question, allow me to call your attention and that of the outside public, to a vital alteration in the Bill threatened by those indefatigable enemies of the service, Messrs. Wood aud Swanson. It is strange how prejudices can warp minds naturally honest, and destroy the sense of right and wrong in those who are ordinarily accustomed to take a fair and impartial "View of questions which come before them. In his speech on the second reading of the Bill when before the House of Representatives last session, Mr. Vogel said, (l The committee recommended that there should be a clause strictly providing that the Governor should take no steps which would cause the total amount of pensions to exceed the sum of £9OOO, unless he were satisfied that the claimants had the right to require the pensions.” It is , the latter part of this provision, as embodied iu clause 10 of the present Bill, that Messrs. Wood and Swanson propose to omit, n/nrl thus at once repudiate all claims existing under Acts of the Legislature of the Colony passed in 1858, 1861, aud 1866, whenever, forsooth, those claims should exceed the arbitrary sum of £9OOO. *

Certainly, Mr. Swanson jeers at the word " claim,” and substitutes the words “ act of grace,” but how would Mr. Swanson feel if he had £IO,OOO invested in Colonial debentures issued under Acts passed in either of these years, if it were now proposed to sweep away or diminish the claims to interest he might have under those Acts. The cases are very similar. I can assure Mr. Swanson that though the civil servants have not lent their money they have many of them given the best part of their lives to the service of the Colony. Those who entered the service more than twenty years, or, perhaps, thirty years ago, and whose claims have arisen under the several Acts alluded to, have had no lack of opportunities during. the immense changes and advance in the prosperity of the Colony during that period, of bettering their condition outside the Government service, but have preferred remaining in that service on account of those very privileges and prospects for the future held out and solemnly guaranteed to them by Acts of the General Assembly. And now Messrs. Wood and Swanson propose to step in and say gravely, “You mistake; you have served all these years under a misapprehension ; you have no rights at all; it is only an act of grace on the part of the Government of the day, and we now propose to limit this act of grace to the sum of £9000.” This, Sir, is simply attempting to avoid repudiation by pleading bankruptcy; for it is saying that, though perhaps there may at some future time be claims under these Acts amounting to £40,000, the said arbitrary sura of £9OOO shall not be exceeded —we can only afford to pay so much in the pound. Unluckily, it will not be even a fair division amongst the hungry claimants of so much in the pound on account of their just claims, for the fortunate possessors of the £9OOO will get their claims in full, and all those who come afterwards will get nothing at alb—l am, &0., A Civil Servant,