The Akaroa Mail. TUESDAY, OCTOBER, 2.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 2, Issue 126, 2 October 1877, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. TUESDAY, OCTOBER, 2.

" How not to do it," is an accomplishment more or less well acquired by all Governments. We say more or less, because it seems to go by degrees, the quality being most largely developed in the General Government, and, in a, docending scale, cropping out in all bodies until we arrive at our road boards and municipal councils, at which stage it can go no further.

We are led to these remarks by a local celebrity popularly known as the " German Bay Itoad Diversion." In order to show how beautifully the principle of " How not to do it " has been observed, we will trace back the history of this diversion as far as we can learn, and we have taken some trouble in our euquiries, Instructions were issued by the Provincial Government, in the year 1874, to survey a line through the property of Mr St. John, and lay down a grade which should be an improvement on the present dangerous road. No difficulty was found in accomplishing this, and an inclination of between 1 in 13 and 14 was pegged off: all the usual preliminaries for cat rying out the contract were shortly afterwards effected, and the work let to good men. hi the early part of 1876, we find the benching and a part of the metalling completed, and at this stage the Government intimate that, as the vote is expended, further operations must cease. This, however, proved to be a mistake, for, after some months practising the " how not to do it " accomplishment, it became apparent to a somnolent Government, that there still remained a balance of between £100 and £200 due to the road ; urgent representations were made that this amount should be spent, but to no effect, and since that day up to the present time, no more has been done. In addition to all this we find that at the very commencement, verbal arrangement were made with Mr St. John, and every promise given of the immediate settlement of his claims. But what is the state of the case ? That the amount awarded to him, long since passed the Treasury, is lying, nobody can find out where ; not a penny has been paid to that gentleman ; there are the fencing posts strewed along the line, and there is the benched road for the last eighteen months' at least, well fitted for traffic,while the travelling public look at this road as they pass and wonder what it all means. The stranger, as he looks down from the coach box, enquires of the driver where the road below him leads to ? The driver, in a melancholy voice, replies that it was supposed to be a diversion to improve the dangerous steep they are now driving over, but the whole thing is a delusion ; that the diversion is no diversion ; that the only purpose it has, and seems likely to have, is to divert ones reflections to the facts that this is one instance among many thousand, of how an effete and procrastinating Government can

effectually accomplish their great motto of "how not to do it."

The impression that the Road Board hag been negligent in this matter is very general. As guardians of public property and, to a certain extent, responsible for the safety of public life and limb, we must confess that we hold with the public notion, that great apathy has been shewn ; and we cannot help thinking, that where such great risk of life is daily occuring, in coaching over a gradient of 1 in 5 in places, the board should not allow a meeting to pass, without sending a forcible remonstrance to the Government. At any moment a deplorable accident may happen, and a coroners' jury would most inevitably add a rider, to the effect that a large measure of culpability rested with the Akaroa and Wainui Road Board members.

We advise those gentlemen to take immediate steps, even if they have to call a special meeting, to make a statement of the whole case to Mr Montgomery, and depend upon it, success will follow. Here, for the present, we leave the question, and hope that the necessity will not exist of our re-adverting to it.