THE PURITY OF PUBLIC LIFE.

Southland Times, Volume 2, Issue 65, 19 June 1863, Page 3

THE PURITY OF PUBLIC LIFE.

(From the Canterbury Press.) Upon one point this journal has never shrunk from speaking out, at the expense of popularity and at the ri k of profit. Time after time we have attacked conduct on the part of the government, because that conduct tended to destroy the proper constitutional and legitimate control which the public OU.L,' lit to exercise over m?n in public authority. To this one answer lias been given — why should we mistrust our public men ? Why tie their hands and cripple their usefulness 1 Why insinuate that they are actuated, by base motives? .Again and again We have explained that all history proves that unworthy, mean, base, and bad men will and do get into power, and that popular election does not ai;d cannot keep them out. If a man denies this, he must simply shin, his eyes to the lessons of the past and the experience of the present. Men acquire power in popuLr governments by the display of those peculiar abilities which command the temporary admiration of thtj masses who have no means of applying real tests to ehmacfer. Statesmen — those who arc worthy of that name, those who look abroad over the great future not only around the narrow horizon of their own times — know, that if a government is to remain incorrupt it must provide for the possibility of bad men getting into power, nny it must lessen the chance of i heir getting into power, by depriving them when in power of using tile opportunity for corrupt ends. In all our attacks on Mr Moorhouse, this one text was our theme : it the I Superintendent may do these things, nnd a bad man gets into office, the public has deprived itself of ail restraint and control. Nay more, it has deprived itself of the means of finding out whether corruption has been practised or nor. All the violent ignorance and shallop presumption exisling in the province opened mouth on us, and did ' its best to dibtort the truth We were endeavoring to enforce, by accusing us of attacking the private reputation of , an honorable man. Time lias shut the mouths of these village politicians, and has shown that w* were as ready as any to do justice to Mr MoOrhouse's private integrity, while we adhered as strongly as ever to the opinion that he ! had done infinite mischief, from which this province will probably never re- ; cover, by instituting a must mistaken ' and vicious system in the conduct of a government. : e have never preached but one . faith, namely, a steady adherence to i those great constitutional principles ] which have made the English govern- ' merit the least corrupt in the whole : world. We have been told, instead of ' adhering to these old maxims of con- : stitutional propriety, to rely solely on I the character of the men whom the great and wise people elect to be their { rulers and guides. An illustration of the value of this guarantee has just been ' presented to our view. Mr James .Macandrew has been eiected to be a i member of the Provincial Council for ( a neighboring province which claims, j in virtue of its wealth, population, and \ energy, to be the leading province in < the colony. | As there are many new comers amongst us, we will tell them who this Mr James Macandrew is. This gentleman was Superintendent of Otago for ] three or four years. In that capacity [ he supplemented his private purse, ( which was in an embarrassed condition, < from the contents of the public chest. And the Provincial Council requested < the Governor to reniov. him from his i office. The Governo^sent down the ' Auditor General to make inquiry into ( the circumstances, and on the report of i that gentleman instantly removed Jsir < Macandrew from his office. His em- ! barrassments introduced him to the ] gaol, where he was in confinement for i a long time. When in gaol, he stojd ' again for the Superintendeney, and ( though beaten, he received a large lium- j her of votes. He now re-enters public , life as a member of the Piovincial I Council.

M». M'Glaslian, the Provincial Treasurer, who paid over the money to Mr Macandrew for private uses, without | adult or vote of Council, was for a long time in the Council after this act, and was one of Major Richardson's Executive Council. The latter fact no doubt encouraged Mr Mac undrew to hope that his deed too would be looked on as venial. "We see no reason why Mr Macandrew should not ajrain be a member of the General Assembly, a member of the Executive Council of the Colony, and Superintendent of Otago. He gives us his view of his own character in hk speech on the hustings the other day : " He had the feeling within himself that he could boast of as much integrity of character as any man in Otago ; however much he might have erred in judgment, he felt sat'sfied in his own conscience that no man there could stand higher than he did in the purity of intention, if the matter were gone into." (Hear, hear.) And he actually got others to think so too, and a daily journal, the Telegraph, to support him. After ihis we see no reason why any man should not get into public life. A ticket-oMeave man was presented to the Queen the other day by the Duke of Wellington. Let no man despair. Let him go on saying, in a tone of indignant virtue, " I am as honest as my neighbors," sufficiently long and sufficiently loudly, and a number of the public will believe it to be trueDo we then despair of popular government? By no means. But we do say there is but one mode in which it can be made to work — namely, by so hedging round the position of those high in office by constitutional forms, that as they will have no means of practising corruption, so they will have no inducement to aspire to an office where corruption is impossible.