QUEENSTOWN.

Dunstan Times, Issue 697, 27 August 1875, Page 3

QUEENSTOWN.

(from our own CORRFSPONDENf.) The new newspaper Company have at last issued their.prospectus, and invite the public to subscribe their mites towards making up a sum of L 2500 to start their little pet organ, to be named the “ Wakatip Times." I hear that the sum of LI2OO has .already been suhsribad, and that the thing is sure to go off. Public opinion is, however, rather against this supposition, as hitherto, whatever has been taken in haudbytjhe parties interested in launching this new journal has never been known to “go off,” except in the shape of a most mysterious disappearance. If they should manage to accomplish this one object it will be the first thing they have brought to a successful issue. It is very probable that the, knowledge of so many repeated failures on the part of the projectors of the Wakatip Times, has caused people to put their names down so willingly for shares, knowing full well that they will never be called upon to pay up. Looking over the list of the provisional directors I find that it comprises the best literary talent in th'c district, more 'especially so in

reference to the Arrow. Taking the directory as a whole, each individual would he able to contribute a most powerful leading article. In politics the people hero appear to he all asleep; and, notwithstanding tho important changes pending our future form of government, not so much as a stir has been made. At one time, Queenstown was tho hotbed of politics, and it oven went so far as to threaten rebellion by throwing itself bodily into tho hands of tho General Government and emulating tho example of Tiraaru. While, I had almost forgotten, some few years before that it threatened severance from Otago altogether, in tho shape of a petition, to be made a separate province. Now, alas I anything in tho shape of public spirit has entirely departed, positively through—as some spiteful people say—MiHenry Mandors having reached tho height of his ambition by becoming an M.R.C. At all events the spirit of contention with things provincial has quite departed from Mr Manclers, and what may still ho wonderful to relate, is that this once popular, agitator has realised the fable of the “ Lion laying down with the lamb,” by becoming a convert to the abuses of provincialism. Here is a specimen of retrogression with a vengeance.—l am glad-to find that tho people of Clyde have expressed their opinions upon this most important question, and while agreeing with all Mr Poole said about tal - ing the opinions of the country upon the matter, 1 still think that Mr Ferauil is in the right when he says that “ the sooner the Abolition Bill becomes law the better will it be for the people of Otago,” and I fancy that a great number of people here are exactly of Mr Feraud’s opinion. Municipal matters have recovered a little from their depressed state. The passing in the Assembly of the Waterworks Bill, together with the notification that his Excellency would sign at the next meeting of the Cabinet Council a crown grant to the Corporation for the islands, has put the mayor and council in better spirits, and the terrors of the threatened -mandamus have been somew'hat modified. I am very glad of this, on account of the mayor, Mr Betts, who has been most unmercifully sat upon, because out of nothing he could produce nothing. There may be some possibility of making bricks without straw when tho clay is present, but when neither is the ca«e, bricks are impossible. He would be a model for all mayors who could construct public works with an empty treasury, and the Corporation over head and ears in debt in the bargain, let alone the fact that the credit of his civic kingdom was utterly gone; oven the Town scavenger and Inspector of Nuisances had struck for non-payment of salaries, and the Town Clerk had seized upon the rates in liquidation of his.