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Auckland Provincial Government Gazette.

(3.)
General Government Offices,
Auckland, 1st May, 1876.

Sir,—

I have received your Honor’s letter of date April 1st instant, requesting an answer to the question
‘Who is the General Government Agent for Auckland?’ and beg to inform you in reply that the duties of that office are discharged by me.

With reference to your Honor’s statement that letters are “continually sent to you signed E. L. Green, for the General Government Agent,” Major Green explains that during the past nine months he has addressed your Honor directly upon two occasions only, and that on each occasion he was requested to adopt that course by an officer of your own staff, Mr. Rice.

I have, &c.,
DANIEL POLLEN.

His Honor the Superintendent,
Auckland.

(4.)
Superintendent’s Office,
Auckland, 9th May, 1876.

Sir,—

I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 1st instant.

You have fallen into an error in stating that only two letters had been sent to me signed by E. L. Green, for General Government Agent. There are seven such letters in my office.

I further beg to point out that, after delaying for more than a month to reply to a plain question I asked as Superintendent of this province, viz., Who was the General Government Agent for Auckland? you have, in your reply of the 1st May, not given me the information I asked for; you merely state that you are discharging the duties of that office.

I gather, however, from your reply that in point of fact a Civil Servant of the Government, who still claims a right to his position in that service as General Government Agent for Auckland, and all the advantages such as pension, &c., which flow from it, holds also the position of a Minister of the Crown in this colony.

There are thus in the present Ministry, out of six Ministers, three who are Civil Servants of the Crown in New Zealand.

It appears to me, as Superintendent of this province, that such an arrangement is altogether adverse to its interests. Ministers who perform the duties of permanent Civil Servants bring political functions to bear upon an office which is supposed to be filled by a permanent Civil Servant with no political tendency or interests whatever to promote or serve.

For instance, the Chief Land Purchase Commissioner has a right to receive a large salary and other advantages of rank and position, as well as ultimately a considerable pension; and for those considerations secured to him by the public he on his part contracts to give his whole time and his services to that public, and to purchase lands solely for them. Now if he was only a permanent independent member of the Civil Service, I am satisfied that he would neither dare to purchase valuable lands from the natives for himself, instead of for the public, nor to allow his subordinates so to do, whilst numbers are driven from this province from being unable to purchase public lands; nor would he be under any temptation to strive to procure political support, by permitting advantages to be given to some of the Queen’s subjects in respect to the purchase of native lands which are not enjoyed by all. Also, if he were simply a civil servant, under the supervision of a responsible minister, when he violated these salutary rules, I should be certain, upon an appeal, as Superintendent of this province, to the Minister in whose department he was, that ample and complete justice would at once be done, instead of which, if I now make a complaint to the Government regarding transactions of Sir Donald McLean’s department, as Chief Land Purchase Commissioner, I in fact complain of the conduct of the Chief Land Purchase Commissioner to himself, and complaints, the justice of which I am sure every impartial person would at once admit, are only treated with neglect and contempt.

Such an independent public civil servant was also intended to be a check upon any Minister who might desire to perform any unlawful act for the purpose of obtaining political support, for it would be his duty, in writing minutes, to point out the illegality of any wrong course it was proposed to pursue, and thus obstruct and prevent the rights of the people at large being invaded and trampled on.

It is clear that if a civil servant, the permanent head of a department, who is also a Minister, once departs from the principle of disinterested justice, he must lose all moral control over the subordinates of his department, and would find it difficult, if not impossible, to prevent them from following similar courses; in short, his real usefulness as a public servant is gone.

It is almost impossible that a civil servant temporarily promoted to a great political office of this nature can hold a really independent position. He must know that he is to revert to the civil service, and his status in that, when he abandons the exalted office he holds as Minister, may in a great degree depend upon those who have been his colleagues in the Ministry. The Minister who puts a civil servant into such a position must to a great extent be his superior rather than his equal as a colleague in office. The civil servant temporarily in the Ministry must necessarily find it very difficult not to seek either not to offend or perhaps conciliate the colleague with whom he should serve as an independent equal.

I will give one further illustration of the evil which has, in my belief, been inflicted on the Province by such a system. [See Enclosure No. 1.]

Under the bankruptcy laws of 1867 and 1868, the Judges of the Supreme Court had given to them the power of appointing newspapers to be for certain purposes the Gazettes in the districts over which the Judges presided, and in which the newspapers were published. [See Enclosure No. 2.]

Under the authority of these laws, the late Chief Justice had, with perfect impartiality appointed for the judicial district of Auckland the two leading newspapers published in this city, and the leading newspaper at the Thames, to be Gazettes within the meaning of the Act, and had thus given rights to these newspapers of which nothing but considerations for the general public good should have caused them to be deprived. During the recent session of 1875, Mr. Bowen, like yourself, taken from the Civil Service to a seat in the Ministry, introduced into the General Assembly a new bankruptcy law...