The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Tuesday, September 15, 1891. PAYMENT OF MEMBERS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume V, Issue 659, 15 September 1891, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Tuesday, September 15, 1891. PAYMENT OF MEMBERS.

R? lust &nd four sot; Let all the ends thou atm'st at he thy oountry'e, Thy Ood’a, and truth'a.;

It is clear that perfection has not yet been reached in our Parliamentary institutions. The members will shortly be rushing off to their homes, leaving a great deal of the important work untouched. One piece of work, however, has not been left untouched, and that is the increasing of the honorarium to /210. The Premier said Z3OO would be the proper payment, and the taxpayers evidently have to be thankful that the Premiers have not always- got their own way. Three hundred pounds a year for doing work that at the outside ought not to take more than a couple of months, is something to occupy the imagination. Say we put it at a hundred pounds a month, which is enough to make a modest man blush, but blushes do not seem to trouble our legislators in Wellington. While the population is month by month leaving our shores for the other colonies, notwithstanding the tales of depression that are constantly being received from the other side, there is the grim spectacle of our legislators scampering off after increasing their salaries to nearly four guineas a week for all the year round. The Minister for Works, in supporting the increase to /240 (which the Parliamentary conscience fortunately resisted) said that “ working men, when elected to Parliament, would require to dress in keeping with their position, and their wives would want to dress better than they did when their husbands were drawing 50 as mechanics.” This is the sort of argument by which members may convince themselves, but it will not convince the public. The mechanic does not get paid a whole year’s wages for a few months’ work. There is also something anomalous in supposing that a Labor member, directly he gets elected to Parliament, must give way to the pomps and vanities of the giddy world of fashion. A competent workman can always manage to dress respectably and give his family the same advantage, if he is able to get work and is not stricken down by sickness. The expense of going over some of the electorates is one which has to be considered, but there are some election expenses which the country ought not be called on to pay for, and which would be much better not incurred. In days of retrenchment, when Civil servants doing very important work are being cut down, it would be more seemly if our legislaters betrayed less selfishness in dealing with the taxpayers’ money. The fixture of 200 guineas is an improvement upon the first stand taken up, but even that appears like a satirical commentary on the recent Public Works Statement, wh ; ch was nearly all Statement without the works.