The Evening Mail. THURSDAY, SEPT. 27, 1877.

Oamaru Mail, Volume II, Issue 442, 27 September 1877, Page 2

The Evening Mail. THURSDAY, SEPT. 27, 1877.

We are pretty well tired of complaining of the management of the hotch-potch Government of this Colony. They seem to have but one qualification, and that is to bungle most successfully everything with which they have to do. A perusal of the report of the Government land sale which took place at the Court-house yesterday cannot fail to convince everybody that there was a screw loose somewhere, or the necessity to pass sections would have been the exception rather than the rule. A number of sections situated in country townships went begging, not, in all probabilty, because there were no persons desirous of purchasing them, but because those persons had not been properly notified. It will scarcely be believed, but it is nevertheless a fact, that the Government, or some Government official, which is about the same, in carrying out ideas of economy, for which the Government is not so famous in other respects, failed to advertise particulars-of the sale until the very last moment had arrived. Did we not know that the Government is extremely cautious in its expenditure for advertising, we would have attributed the omission to the forgetfulness of some official. The advertisement was not inserted in any form in the Mail until the evening previous to the day of sale, and although its publication even at that late hour had the desired effect so far as Oamaru and suburbs are concerned, yet our country papers, as they are not forwarded to our subscribers until the morning after publication, did not reach their destinations until too late to be of any service to those who may have desired to be present at the sale as purchasers. We are gratified to observe that our morning contemporary has taken up the matter. It is quite correct in stating that the extra cost of advertising the sale effectually would only have entailed an additional expenditure of "a pound or two."