OCR SYDNEY LETTER.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 304, 28 May 1889, Page 2

OCR SYDNEY LETTER.

[from oua own cobbbooxdxxt.]

The accounts of the Casual Labor Board are just now attracting a good deal of attention. The Casual Labor Board, be it understood, virtually consisted of the Hon. John Davies, M.L.C., 0.M.G., &0., one of the Premier’s many henchmen. Mr Davies had two colleagues, but they seem to have been chiefly distinguished by a masterly inactivity. Hence there is no need to take them into the consideration. Some 15 months ago, when the unemployed were parading the etreets of Sydney, eeveral thousand strong, storming the cooksbops, haranguing at the Queen’s statue, and making themselvee generally more oonepiououe than agreeable, the Casual Labor Board was appointed to grapple with the difficulty. They achieved ooneiderable cue oees, but at considerable expense. The “unemployed ” were drafted out to labor campe, set to clearing Crown lands, making Government roads and the like. The Goverment roads, by the way, eometimes went through private property, vide the annale of the Hornsby and Holt-Sutherland scandals. The people who benefited by their labore came in for a good deal of odium, but the Labor Board iteelf escaped with comparatively little scathe. A commission was however, directed to examine into the expenditure, and they now report that they have discovered some irregularities, comparatively trifling in their amount, but which possess a very disagreeable significance. Some three or four amounts paid in respect of wood out by the unemployed were, it seems, paid by Mr Davies to his own private account, and though he promptly refunded them when the fact was brought before him, hii explanation has not been deemed satisfactory, and the matter has been referred to the Crown law officers for their opinion as to the proper action to be taken.

It muet be rembered that over a quarter of a million of money was expended by the Board, that the Government, to whose maladministration the •’ unemployed " phenomenon was primarily due, took no paine to secure an efficient control and check over thia enormous outgoing, that Mr Davies end his colleagues succeeded in removing, if not an actual danger, at least a very portentous eyesore from our social life, and finally that although these duties occupied nearly his whole time, ho has not received a shilling for them. Under these circumstance!, end oonriderin; that tho whole of the irregularities pointed out by tho Commission do not amount to much over £9O, the case seems to be one that calle for a lenient judgment, Mr Davies’ explanation le that he cashed the cheques to pay necessary expenses for which the Government had made no provision, and which he other, wise would have had to pay out of his own pocket, Ono thing can hardly eecapo attention. Never is a Parkes Government in power for long together, without some public scandal, and some one being made a gazing-stock. For the time being these unwilling sacrifices, like the children thrown to the wolves, serve to divert attention from the short cominge of the Government, and enable it to gain some cheap and very easily earned hudae for its vigorous and thorough-going treatment of the offenders. People say it is a trick of the detectives of—Timbuotoo—to offer all sorts of opportunities to pereons of easy morale, in order that they may gain credit for efficiency by arresting them afterwards, Of COUM6 no person of respectability will credit the story, nor do I wish to make any reflection on the morals of Mr Davies. The most common feeling, I fancy, is of relief. For when it became known that £250,000 of public money had been expended without the usual official checks, nobody would have been surprised if the “ suspense account ” had run into three or four or five figures,

instead of only two. The gumming up of the whole seems to be that Mr Daries was eminently useful in dealing with the unemployed, but as a financier he was not a success. Nor had the Government who appointed him any right to suppose that he possessed of so much skill in the latter respect as to justify them in dispensing with the ordinary aids. Mr Davies is notoriously subject to certain aberrations in orthography, which earned for him the of Jannery John.” Now, it is quite possible that a man who is weak in one respect may make up for it by uncommon strength in another, Thus men who oan't spell have developed into financiers of the highest order. But the possibility hardly warrants the assumption that it would necessarily follow that because a man had an affection for phonetic spelling, he was therefore possessed of superhuman skill in bookkeeping. Yet this is the assumption on which the Government seem to have acted in the case of the honorable John. The report shows considerable animus, which is a pity. Royal Commissioners are not supposed to go about their work in the spirit of detectives, anxious to get up a case, but rather in that of uncompromising, but, at the same time, calm and judicial observers. In reference to the return by Mr Davies of one of the cheques the Commissioners report uses the offensive term "disgorging” which evidently implies a prejudgment of the whole case. The plain lesson to be learnt is that in justice to public servants, a constant and careful supervision of their accounts is necessary, not a fitful and capricious overhauling, which may or may not take place at the end of 12 or 15 months. Dr John Want has returned from China and to the disgust of those protectionists ■who reckoned on him as an ally who would reduce the " majority of four ” by one vote, he has declared himself a freetrader. With much superfluous rhetoric, too.lhas he made his confession of faith. He would like, he says, to write across Sydney harbor, “ This is a free port.” This goes far beyond the present Freetraders. They levy as much duty through the Customs as others. The only thing they stipulate is that they shall not be duties which nurture native industry. Besides being at variance with the party to which he has allied himself, Mr Want must find considerable difficulty in reconciling his present professions with his past conduct. His ideas about the desirableness of “ free ports ” did not prevent him from assisting a former Ministry to" sneak in Protection ” by the imposition of ad valorem duties. However, as he is a special pleader by profession, he will no doubt be able to make it quite plain—to himself —that these things involve no inconsistency. Fiscal questions apart, Mr Want is under the strongest obligations to his political sponsor, Sir John Robertson, wfio, when he was absent in China, proposed him as member for Paddington, and vouched for the sincerity of his protege’s Freetrade convictions. Therefore his present attitude need cause no surprise. But his future adherence to his new allies in defiance of the past traditions of his career, is somewhat problematical. A criminal named Buttner is under sen-

tonoe Of death for an outrage on a defenceleu girl who slept in his house. The usual agitation for a reprieve nfiS been Instituted, and the usual course h«« been adopted—namely, that of endeavoring to save the life of the violator by impugning the character of his victim. A letter signed by the latter has been forwarded to the Government, and their procedure is, as I write, uncertain. The letter as published in the papers was certainly never written by a girl of her own motion. It seeme rather the work of an astute lawyer, to which a signature hu subsequently been obtained. Stories preJudicial to the character of a certain Jessie tennox have been forwarded from Brisbane, where it appears She was notoriously loose. Bqt the Sydney Jessie Lennox, who is oo’hcerned in this case, was certified by the doctor to have been virtuous up to the time of the offence. It is impossible for the present to say how the ease will go. But it would be refreshing to see a little zeal for manhood and womanhood, and for the maintenance of civil law and social order instead of this morbid mawkish sympathy which lies in a death-like slumber, until some abominable crime is committed which it can condone and defend. The situation of the sugar market is beginning to cause anxiety. Last year the bane crops 6f New Jlouth Wales and tjuemts*

land were short, and there was no corresponding advance in prices to draw supplies from other quarters. Since then, however, there has been a great upward movement in Europe, and it is hard to get sugar from anywhere. The consumption of the colony is well on for a thousand tone per week, but at ths prosent moment there are only seven or eight weeks’ supply in sight, whilst it will be three or four months before the new sugars come in, and no one seems to know where the balance is coming from. How* ever, time will unravel the secret