ME M'KENZIE'S DEFENCE. (Daily Times.)

Otago Witness, Issue 1947, 18 June 1891, Page 29

ME M'KENZIE'S DEFENCE. (Daily Times.)

The whole structure of the Hon. John M'Kenzie's Palmerston address presented so flimsy an appearance when subjected to intelligent investigation that we were content at the time to indicate, by a brief reference to what he avowedly considered the principal points in his defence, the general conclusion that he had totally failed to clear himself of the serious charges arising out of his Invercargill vagaries. While however this much was abundantly clear, and while the petty and piteous complaints of the hon. gentleman with regard to the press criticisms on his conduct were in themselves enough to destroy whatever appearance of good faith the address might otherwise have possessed, we were necessarily at some slight disadvantage as regards the mere details upon which Mr M'Kenzie laid such stress. Upon such

disadvantage,iwhich must always attach similar circumstances to an independent press, Mr M'Kenzie placed a desperate, but, as the event shows, a futile, reliance. Mr Spence, it is true, had left the country, and was therefore not to be feared ; but our columns yesterday gave evidence that his absence will not be allowed, as Mr M'Kenzie had evidently hoped, to afford the Minister an unrestricted opportunity for flooding the country with wholesale misstatements with regard to the Invercargill Land officers. The letter of Mr Boyds, late receiver of land revenue for Southland, bears upon the face" of it the stamp of truth and moderation ; and to those who know the high character of the writer it will be absolutely conclusive as a proof of the lengths to which a Minister of the Crown has not been ashamed to go in the vain hope of deluding people who had found him out into the belief that he was all the time an injured in-

nocent.

Let us take as a single example the facts concerning the business at the Invercargill Land office. Mr M'Kenzie professed to give at Palmerston a summary of the daily work of the several Government officers there — so many letters received, so many answered, so many book entries, and so many applicants for land to be dealt with, with other details of the like kind. This work, which, as it was cunningly set forth by him, bore the appearance of being but light employment for a single official, he deliberately led his hearers to believ#* was ■ costing the country at the time of his visit L 2223 per annum. If Mr M'Kenzie had desired to tell the truth about this 1 annual sum, instead of caring for. nothing but shielding himself at any cost of misrepresentation from the just consequences of his wrongdoing, he would have put the matter in the words of Mr Rojfds— that " this L 2223 consists of the salaries of the whole field and office staff" of the Survey and Lands departments combined, including the Chief Surveyor and Commissioner of Crown Lands, the district

surveyor, his cadet, the land transfer draughtsman, the draughtsman and computer, the assistant draughtsman, the Crown lands ranger and steward of village settlements, the receiver of

land revenue, the law office clerk, the messenger, and the woman who scrubs out the offices." But this glaring instance does not complete ttie exposure of the Minister's misrepresentations even on this one matter alone. ■*?• Every one of the figures he gave with regard to the entries in the books, the days of

receipt of payments, the letters written, and every other detail of any importable are now shown to have been either downright inventions on the part of Mr M'Kenzig, or the result of the most utter and ljopeless ignorance of the very elements of the business he was pretending to reform. In either case, when used as they were by*fr Minister of the Crown for the purpose of discrediting old and valued servants of the country, they were jpoisoned weapons the use of which reflected nothing but discredit upon the person who stooped to employ them. With regard to the charge against Mr Spence that he permitted some-

body or other to acquire an unduly large 'area of Southland forest, this had already been effectually disposed of before Mr Royds' revelations / by the simple statement that Mr_M'Kenzie carefully avoided making any reference to the existence of a much larger monopoly of the same kind — namely, Sir RBbert Stout's Pine Company. We do not know that there is any harm in either of these enterprises. But if it is true, as Mr M'Kenzie laboured to prove, that the granting of certain areas to this vaguely-indicated

" monopolist " was wrong because those areas were big, it naturally follows that the grants to the Pine Company were worse because they were bigger. And now we have revealed to us by Mr Royds the singular fact in addition, that " when the New Zealand Pine Company some time since made application for an additional saw mill area — they already holding a very large area of bush land — Mr Spence referred the matter to the present' Government, and was by' them instructed to grant the additional area" The question of whether this additfonal grant was in itself desirable or otherwise is comparatively immaterial ; but it is obvious that unless Mr M'Kenzie can immediately and emphatically deny that he ever sanctioned it he stands convicted of statements wkh the object of blackening Mr Spence's character ' which honest men everywhere will save us the trouble of adequately characterising in our columns. $

As a matter of fact the whole of these allegations about maladministratration collapse into ludicrous nothingness in the .clear light of Mr Royds' facts — the silly advertisement story is placed in its true aspect ; the land alleged by Mr M'Kenzie to have been " worth L 3 per acre " is shown to have lain in the market for years at LI without a single offer; and lastly, it is proved that it never was in Mr Spence's power at all to limit in any way the number of sawmill areas granted to any individual or any association whatever !

As regards the Campbell appointment, it requires no further comment from us. Not even the Minister himself ever seriously attempted to defend it ; and now that the palliations of the job, which 'were put forward for want of anything better, have been shown up in their true light, it only remains for the people to determine for themselves, as we unhesitatingly invite them to do, whether the whole of the changes in the Invercargill Land Office were not, when the naked truth is told, a meie device to foist upon the public service of New Zealand a man whose only claim to distinction of any sort is to be found inscribed in black letters upon the records of the Supreme Court.