SALAUIES AND PUBLIC OFFICES, 181 



deference and respect enjoying neither the social posi 

 tion nor the consideration which the name implies at 

 home, and yet for these names opposing parties strug 

 gling as bitterly, or more bitterly, than with us. 



The consequence of this disproportion between places 

 and people has been, that the salaries of office at first 

 large, when the offices were filled with educated men 

 brought up at home with English ideas have from time 

 to time been reduced, till now a Provincial Secretary 

 and an Attorney-General, with 550 sterling a-year, 

 and a Solicitor-General with 200, represent the kind of 

 position to which the highest talent employed in the 

 public service can now attain ; and the tendency is to 

 still farther reductions. It illustrates very strikingly 

 the simplicity of the provincial farmers, living remote 

 from towns and rarely seeing money, that one of the 

 shrewdest and now most influential of their body, in 

 his place in the House of Assembly, once declared, 

 &quot; that, with the utmost stretch of his imagination, he 

 could not comprehend how any man could possibly spend 

 more than 300 a-year ! &quot; 



It has often been remarked with how little talent the 

 world is governed, and history has certainly shown that 

 the cleverest men do not always make the best rulers ; 

 and, in republics, they are often the most dangerous men 

 to rule. If, therefore, small emoluments will secure that 

 moderate amount of talent which will keep the public 

 wheels most regularly moving, the greater the economy 

 introduced, the better for the people. I speak at pre 

 sent only of the impression which such a state of things 

 produced upon my own mind. A great official designa 

 tion did not carry with it the same meaning to the mind 

 of a provincial as it had been accustomed to do to my 

 own ; and the actual position of official men in the pro 

 vinces would probably to him appear no way anomalous. 



The ultra-liberal and democratic tone of feelin and 



