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Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 495, 12 April 1881, Page 2

Fbom Wellington we learn that the folowing telegraph stations are exempt from the extra charge of sixpence on each telegram imposed by order in Council dated .-50 th October last:—liampden, Herbert Kekerangu, Longford, Lyell, Manuherikia (Otago), Miranda, Uhaewai, Owake, Iliclimond Tarawera, Tophouse, Upper Hutt, Uretara, Waitmi, Waipu, We observe Akaroa 13 still left out in the cold. Really this sixpenny telegraphic business is about as discreditable an affair as anything perpetrated by our anti-corruption and virtuous Government, and that is saying a good deal. The men who could read bribeiy on the face oE a town clock, and detect corruption in the whistle of a special train, have not hesitated to create for themselves means of bestowing or withholding favors of quite an unprecedented nature, and having created them, to use them, we say it advisedly, in the most unblushing manner. The stations which are named above are nearly if not quite unknown to fame, and are among those which it may be necessaiy to maintain, but which arc not likely to pay anything like expenses for say, the next couple of centuries. Take two or threa examples at random. Dining the last year for which accounts have been published, Upper Hutt earned £28 10s 7d and cost £114 5s 8d; Wainui had a revenue of £20 3s Id (don't forget the penny, pi inter) against an expenditure of £10l 15s Gd ; while Top-house (a spot compared to which Mr Jackson's hotel on the Christchurch road in in a thickly populated locality) brougnt in the lnunilicont sum of £9 19s 4d in cash, and only cost the countiy £109 6s 5d to collect it! These are a few of the facts and figures. Comment is needless; in fact the whole proceedings, both in the imposition and withdrawal of the impost, are of so shameless a nature that we feel that the language in ordinary use of among civilised men is incapable o£ expressing the contempt engendered for its authors.