THE Inangahua Times. PUBLISHED TRI-WEEKLY. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30, 1881.

Inangahua Times, Volume II, Issue II, 30 March 1881, Page 2

THE Inangahua Times. PUBLISHED TRI-WEEKLY. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30, 1881.

Thb result of the revision of the Coanty Electoral roll* is, on the face of it, not creditable to tbe compiler, nor the system under which the work has been done. That so many names should have found insertion without apparently sufficient cause, and that on the oths'r hand, so many should have been omitted, certain]; furnishes a peg upon which (o hang adverse comment. But looking fairly at the whole matter, we are . not disposed to fall in with the accusation so broadly made that (lie faultiness of tbe compila* tion is purely (he result of a deep-seated scheme to tnainKJn the ascendency of any one patty in the Council. Tt is a very easy matter to make accusations, and to suggest motives of the worst possibler kind to support them ; but some#&^i%ore' than a mere jumping at conclusions is requisite in order to estab* lish these accusations. Now the Valuer is not an officer of the Council in the sense in which that term is ordinarily understood. Having obtained the appointment by being tbe lowest tenderer for the making of the assessment, he does not hold the position at the pleasure of the Council, and, therefore, jg perfectly independent of anything in the shape of patronage from that body. As a oontrac* tor, he undertook to moke the valuation for a certain sum— a wholly inadequate one by tbe way— and his style of doing the work teem to have been in general keeping with the way in which all contract work is performed in this County— to slum it over in the quickest possible time, and with the smallest possible regard to completeness. Hence, it appears, that instead of travelling about the County in order to visit the different properties, the •• Valuator " has, with the assistance of the old roll and the aid, possibly, of a few public-house inquiries, hatched up a roll which is worth just about what the Council paid for it. If it is nasty, tbe Council and the ratepayers have the satisfaction, at least, of knowing that it was very cheap, and " cheap and nasty" is a proverb of ancient origin. The Valuer receives £2 per week for tbe performance of the duties of Valuer, Rate Collector, Dog-tax Collector, and other services, and it can never be argued that that. remuneration is at all adequate to tbe* position or tbe labor and time it involves. We are not* in any way apologising for the negligence of the Valuer or his slovenly handiwork, but simply wish to point out that this fact taken with the circumstance* that the Valuer was, from the' manner of his ap» pointment, quite independent of either the good or ill favour of the Council, in a great way rebuts the assumption " so positively put forth that the rolls were compiled with a special regard to the interests of any one section of the com. munity. The matter of making the an' nual assessment has always been a fruitful topic of discontent, for it is nosecret that tbe first valuation made in the County was done for the most part in the parlor of a Heefton hotel, but, those whose names were omitted, were only too glad then to escape the payment of rates, ond, therfore, quietly laughed in their sleeve at the omission. But it seems that a change Ims come over the scene, for not only do people now object to being left out in the cold iv that manner, but actually cry out for increase of valuation. We have not one word of ol jeetion to raise against this being done, ler we regard it as a heal Iby sign of the interest which people take in local Go-

moment, and shall be gla/1 to see it maintained, as llie only true safe-guard for the due admiais' ration of bur public offrtirs. But bud there been in those days, as tbere seems to be now, the eye of a strong Vigilance Committee upon the work of the preparation of the County rolls, we do not hesitate to believe that quite as many omissions would hare been, brought to light as have been revealed in connection with the present assessment, and taking into account the method of the present Valuer's appoint* raeut, and hi* own Habitual delinquencies, we are guilty of no affectation in, saying that we are only surprised that the case is not very much worse. The County has apparently beun rawtacked from one end to the other iii search of omissions, and as the result of this it has been found that fiftr>two persons .have been improperly, j 'pUced on the roll, and. 63 omitted who ought to have been placed on. Taking into account the scattered nature of settlement, and the difficulty of travelling, the result) is, after all, not nearly so bad as it is painted. But there is another matter to be considered in regard to the present revisio^jwMck. mater it !!y affects the number of onus-, sions. Mr Revel} rules, if we undei* stand him aright, that in the case of a cumber of miners living in the same but, only one can vote in respect to the holding, aed upon this ground erased from the roll a large number of names placed there upon that q iali6cation. We are not at the moment certain upon the point, but have an impression that Mr Sbaw,the former judge of the Assessment. Court pronounced in quite an opposite direction, namely, that each occupant of a hut possessed a lUim for enrolment. It was upon this point many eliminations were made on Saturday last, and if the Valuer in admitting > those names acted upon the strength of Mr Shsw's ruling, then there is some excuse for this part, at least, of his offending. At the risk of repeating, we say again we have no wish whatever to seek to screen the Valuer from the blame which undoubtedly^ alfacbeaTtolbim for liis slipshod work," but see no sufficient reason to impute to him anything worse than mere carelessness or inadvertence, for it is far too absurd to suppose that strings of names of unqualified person* would have been wilfully enrolled, and: others- as wilfully pmitteJ, in the face of the extremely slender prospect there was, in the present state of public feeling, of smuggling them through the Revision Court. For what purpose is the Revision ' Court but to sift the accuracy of the assessment and to afford aggrieved property holders an opportunity of making known their com' plaints P and if in the face of that provision people slumbered, they would deserve njfbepl 1 fa|¥itban |liaf wpiich wpuid befal them at the hands of care'est, or at the worst wilfully negligent valuers. But to judge from what has already been written on the subject, one would be led to imagine that there should be no necessity whatever for Courts of Revision. Everything .should be in apple-pie order, and valuers should be like some public writers on the subject— above suspicion. Tue common notion, however, is that Revision Courts are just as essential to the working of the Rating Act as Magistral tes Courts are to other purposes, and were provided expressly to guard against cases such as tbat which has just come to light, and if, in the presence of such a safeguard, people permitted anyone to"; inter' fere with their rights and privileges " the verdict would undoubtedly be— serve them right. Jn view of this fact, then, we don't quite see where the alleged murderous design upon the liberties of the people comes in. But the Court seems to have been thoroughly imbued with the idea that the whole thing worked by design, acting under this impression cam ried on the work of expurgation with something approaching to poetic justice. For instance, we fail to see why the Council should have been mulcted in professional costs upon every application. We ha*e no objection to see a good fat crow fall to the lot of Mr Jones,' but. at the same ti-ue think that a moderately good general fee upon the wholewduld have been sufficient, more particularly as that gentleman no doubt held a retainer fom the parties themselves. However, the matter is neither here nor there, and would hardly be worth referring to, but for the circumstance that it seemed like turning the tap on at full speed on the Council Let us hope at all events that we have now got something approaohing to a complete County t?oll, and if the es> perience of the past few days only conveys? the obvious lesson to the Council in regard to the appointment nnd payment of its valuer, a gond service will have been done the community, even though it be at the expense o f tbe unmerited abuse heaped upon the present offcer.