The Star. WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 1869.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 364, 14 July 1869, Page 2

The Star. WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 1869.

Humaw nature is weak, and, whether we like to admit it or nofc, requires strong incentives to well-doing. From the child in arms up to the highest official, through all grades, in all callings and professions, the hope of reward in some shape or other, more than the dread of punishment, keeps us in the right path and induces us to do our best. There was truth and deep philosophy in the reply of Thomson, author of "The Seasons," to the man who asked him why he did not rise earlier. The poet, it seems, was iv the habit of staying in bed till midday, or later, and when asked why he did not get up at the hour usually observed by other people, he is reported to have said — " Man, I ha'e nae motive." Tbere was no inducement, and the author of " The Castle of Indolence " was more candid thau people usually are. We think it will be generally ad mitted that the efficiency of every branch of the public service is promoted by a well-regulated system of promotion from grade to grade. And if there should happen to be a few "good things," — necessary and well paid sinecures for instance — to which public servants may look forward, bo much the better. Nothing, aB it seems to us, is more likely to injure the public service and to render ifc inefficient than the appointment of some " outsider" to any office which is generally looked to, in the service, as one of its rewards. This has been done several times in New Zealand, aud well-informed rumour says ifc is to be done again. Mr Gisborne's successor in the office of Under-Secretary will, it is understood, be a gentleman who is now a member of the House of Humour may be wrong in this case, as it has often been before. Still, the bare possibility of such an appointment as we have mentioned is in itself a sufficient reason for the remarks we consider it necessary to make. The gentleman whom, it is said, the Government have selected as Mr Gisborne's successor may have all the qualifications necessary for the oflice. He may, also, have strong claims upon the gentlemen now in power. That is not the question at all. What we have to consider is the public service, and that alone. Is such an appointment calculated to impair the efficiency of the public service ? We think it is. Every appointment of a similar nature, in so far as it takes away the natural and beneficial ambition of all otber men in the same service — the ambition to rise by ability and work well done — must, we think, operate injuriously. There is another side from which to yiew the question. If the principle is once admitted, that those who are in power may confer such appointments aa the one alluded to on some person outside the public service, the door if opened to a kind of patronage which would eventually act in a very in-

jurious manner upon the House of Representatives itself. Constituencies would be scrambled for by men who kept steadily and solely in view the chance of winning a comfortable appointment in the public service by means of the support they could give fco one or other of the partieß striving for office. And this, as tbe public generally will admit, is not an imaginary evil. The colony is not, unfortunately, without some striking examples of what we mean. For these reasons, therefore — because it would have the direct eflect of impairing the efficiency of the public service, and because it tends strongly in the direction of a kind of patronage calculated to increase the political-ad-venturer class of representative in the Assembly — we think it our duty to say that the appointment of an "outsider," as successor to Mr G-isborne would be a grave mistake.