The Evening Star TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1869.

Evening Star, Volume VII, Issue 2068, 21 December 1869, Page 2

The Evening Star TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1869.

Whether the people of Otago really are the innocent beings that, judging by some of their acts men of large experience in worldly affairs would pronounce them, is matter for conjecture. Certainly there is a novel charm in the way they do things and talk about them. In gas, in waterworks, and in railway works, they can do nothing like other people. They remind one of children running after butterflies, and in their eagerness to grasp them, overlooking the valuable plant they crush in their spasmodic efforts. Cheap gas is a good thing : so they determine to build two gas-houses instead of one to obtain it, and thus invest seventy or eighty thousand pounds where forty thousand would do. A plentiful supply of water is a necessity : so they contrive to spoil a good scheme by giving itto the wi’ong engineer to carry out and thus make a botch of it. A Port Chalmers Railway is required ; so the Government hold out a bait for the formation of a company, and just when satisfactory arrangements are about to be completed, they throw them overboard on the flimsiest pretence, and make a bargain with an individual. But the strangest of all ideas is that concerning the Clutha Railway. The Government did set about it in the first instance somewhat in accordance with the com-mon-sense business principles of the rest of the world. They sent a gentleman to England to try to induce some contracting firm or company to undertake the work just as ordinary men of business would do. It is perhaps on the whole as well that he did not succeed in his mission, for since that time appliances and mechanical discoveries have been made that throw some additional light upon securing what is required. Exit the oddest of all odd schemes seems to have been hatched in the brain of the Executive and fostered by the wisdom of the Daily Times, that the only way to a satisfactory construction of the line is by inviting a competitive formation of companies. It was absurd enough when the promoters of a limited liability company were asked to become individually responsible for the construction of the Port Chalmers Railway. Such primitive ideas of the nature of responsibility do not tend to raise our estimate of the business qualifications of those who have dominion over us. But that was get-over-able. A little explanation might haply have cleared the mist away from their minds, and showed them the nonsense implied in the proposition. But what about competing companies 1 Is it possible to imagine that companies will be formed offering favorable terms on which they may be allowed to construct the Clutha Railway 1 ? Herein is the folly of the idea—the advocates of it confound two distinct and separate functions ; that of employers and employed. The Provincial Government found it necessary, in order to get that railway constructed, that liberal terms guaranteeing a certain amount of interest should be offered. A company proposed to undertake the work. How it was quite competent for the Government to have secured themselves in arranging the conditions to which they would agree. It was not likely that any company would come forward and offer to carry it out on receiving a lower rate of interest than was proposed ; and therefore, so far as that is concerned, one company would be as good as another. To invite a competition of companies therefore is absurd. But it is another thing to invite tenders for the construction of the work. In India, when a company proposed to carry out a railway, no opposition was made by the Government, but the mistake was made of guaranteeing interest on the outlay without placing a limit to it. In consequence of this, almost every railway constructed has cost nearly twice as much as it ought to have done, and on the most moderate line has far exceeded the estimate. This might easily be avoided by the Government making it a condition that estimates for the construction of the line should be invited by the Company, and that the lowest, consistently with the work being efficiently done should be accepted, interest being paid only on that amount. Unless the Government intend to undertake the position and work of a railway company this seems to us the only rational course. There may be contractors willing to come forward and undertake to form the line and work it afterwards, but they are not likely to do' it one farthing cheaper; nor, in fact, so cheaply as they would have done had they not had permanently to invest capital. A contractor can usually make much more of his capital by keeping it employed in the execution of large works, than by locking it up in a single undertaking. It seems to us that the mode adopted by the Government in dealing with railway matters

is what his Honor the Superintendent said, the “ How not to doit.” Perhaps after all we may be mistaken, and this apparently innocent mode of dealing with company forming may be but a blind to give to some lucky individual the privilege of making the line. When the dealing of the "Executive with Island Blocks, Port Chalmers Bailways, and other little matters are considered we cannot be sure that there is not something or somebody behind, whose purposes are to be served. We should be sorry to insinuate any such thing for we really are not in the secret. It may perhaps be the other way, and some obnoxious individual is to be thwarted. Logs can be rolled either way, and when clodocrat is in the ascendancy squattocrat must duck his head. Again we say Arcades amho.