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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Rare Volume

Note XXIV. p. 21

Note XXIV. p. 21.

See the remonstrances of the Otago colonists.—P. P. August,

XXIV. Abuse of official patronage: the Otago judge, &c.

1851, p. 213. The statement of the amount of business transacted by the judge in his first year, is from a report of the first session of the court in a late local paper. The Otago judgeship is, perhaps, the grossest instance of misplaced patron- page 36 age which has occurred in the colony; but it by no means stands alone. One or two out of many similar cases may be alluded to. The conversion into a separate office of the registrarship of deeds at Auckland, previously held jointly with the registrarship of the supreme court for one salary (neither office being onerous), and the appointment to it of an old military friend of the governor's, with a good salary and a clerk to do the business, was one instance—Parl. Pap. 1850, p. 124. The creation of a civil secretaryship at Auckland, bestowed upon a southern colonist, who was a zealous supporter of the cause of self-government, just when the Governor was about to withhold the constitution of 1846; the subsequent amalgamation of that office with one held by another party, when the civil secretary wished to return to the south; and the creation of another new office in the south, and its bestowal upon him, followed by his acceptance of a seat in the nominee council, has created great dissatisfaction in the colony. The conversion of the Nelson resident magistracy into a superintendency, the salary being raised from 250l. to 500l a-year, while the duties remained precisely the same as before, for the avowed purpose of providing for Major Richmond, who was displaced from the Wellington superintendency by its conversion into a lieutenant-governorship, was a third flagrant instance of an unnecessary appropriation of the revenue, for purposes of private patronage. Many more might he adduced, but the tendency of despotic governments to purchase support by patronage is too well known to require further illustration.