CULTIVATING THE PAUPER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 10621, 17 March 1896, Page 6

CULTIVATING THE PAUPER.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sie, —Your leader of Friday last snd the letters of " Subscriber " and A.. C. Begg in your Saturday'* issue, dealing respectively with charitable aid, the hospital, and the beuevolent institution, are each and all of them called for. It is admitted that there ia something radically wrong in the present system, and that the spirit of pauperism is now, and his b«en, growing in steadily alarming proportions.

Even before the present Government name into office this was so. but the Utter have directly and indirectly given it a great impetus It has lured the people to look to ttie public purse for everything rather than to individual effort and independent honest toil; it hen dispirited enterprise and meddled so much with, trade that capital is dubious about opening up avenues for our workers.

The system of spoils to the victors has beeu carried out to a nsn seating extent; nay, more than that fresh spoils have been created and new billets found to satisfy the hungry cravings of thote who put the present crowd into power. Before we hnd an enormous civil service; now we hare a surfeited one.—so much so that if the present pace continues we shall have ere long a population almoss entirely composed of civil servants, M H.R.'s, J.P.'s, and local Government officials. Daily I meet 'with people who either themselves or members of their families have be^u granted this pecuniary emolument or other gain through the »gency of M.H.R.'s oE the right colour and their hangerson.

Both for the House and for the posts of trustees of our various institutions, voting power und the other gains accruing from occupying these public positions are being op-nly purchased at the expense of the taxpayer. It is assured positions for themselves first and the honour of the country last.

The evils of a dominant democracy, in which the idle, the improvident, the dissolute, the criminal, the recipients of charitable relief, the hoodlum, and the larrikin of both sexes have as much say in the government of the country as the honest independent workman and the good citizen is bringing about a state of gross corruption that is p»inful to 'behold. The lowest passions of the lowest types of the mob have been pandered to, regulations are daily beiug broken to create positions for the friends of our incompetent carpet-baggers and hungry sycophants, so that under our present ritjime. government has been reduced to the art of satisfying place-hunters, and patriotism is at a discount.

The first and main radical change wanted is a thorough change of Government; a sweeping out of every carpet-bagger; a healthier and lees expensive form of representation. The country .is over-governed, over-officered, and is run on most extravagant and expensive lines— it io being crushed by over-taxation, political chicanery and wire-pulling. The farmer on the land, the miner in the bowels of the earth, the fisherman in his boat, and every honest and provident toiler are groaning under the evils of the present system. Where the more billets a M.H R secures for hia friends, the more patronage the trustee of a charitable or aDy other public institution recklessly bestows, the more secure does he become for perpetrating these evils in the future.

It appears to me it is sops everywhere and the taxpayers' pocket last. Our Colonial Treasurer will agaiu gull the public with another surplus. Already it is being extensively propagated that the revenue has exceeded what was estimated. Of course it has. It has proved to be more than he led the people to believe it would be when he foisted his tariff proposals on the House and the country. Every reflective mind kn«w that it would be so. Mr W»rd himself must have known it also. But it would not have done to let the public know beforehand how much really he was going to filch out of their pockets. Money was urgently needed, and the cloak of indirect taxation is useful to a necessitous and spendthrift Executive. The example set in the general government infects our local bodies. Onr iocal hospital, after speading about £1500 or more on a new operating theatre, must- now turn it into a kitchen and build another lavish theatre. Our Benevolent Trustees must suck another £1000 extra out of the rates as a bait for its votaries ; and yet the sources from which theae extravagances are fed are poorer and less able to afford it.

Truly there is a great opening just now for a patriot to rescue the colony from this extravagance in general and in detail—to reduce this over-government, with it3 numberless offices and myrmidons of publio tiervants, to something like what a sound commercial house would run it. —I am, &c.,

Dunedin, Maroh 16.

Taxpayer.