PORT CHALMERS RAILWAY.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2176, 28 April 1870, Page 2

PORT CHALMERS RAILWAY.

(To the Editor of the Evsnim 7 Star.) Sir, —In your leading article of last night you make the following remark : —“ Neither will the proposed. Compulsory Land Taking Ordinance, rendered necessary by the exorbitant demands of many owners of property for strips of land required for the construction of the Port Chalmers! Hail way, meet with any opposition. Nothing can be more disgraceful than these avaricious graspings of men whose property must be immeasurably increased in value by the formation of the line.” Again you say : —" It is quite time that these nice little jobs by which men profit doubly at the expense of the people should be frowned down [as unfair advantages.”

Being a landholder ia the district, I oan only say 1 have never heard of a single party through .whose property it is proposed to take the line who has asked one penny for the land required for the Railway ; and I have this day made enquiry of several holders including the Chairman of the District Road Board, and all bear me out in my assertion. The ratepayers have only asked to be informed what land would be required, but this we have never been abie to ascertain till the day before the opening of the Provincial Council. Ihe short time which I have to notice the injustice that has been done the settlers of the West Harbor District by the publication of your article prevents me from saying more in this, but 1 shall again trouble you with the subject, and also with what took place at a meeting of the rate-payers and railway contractors, and then leave the Provincial Council and public to form their own conclusions as to who are likely to participate in “nice little jobs. 1 ’ G. P. Clifford. Dunedin, ]2Bth April, 1870,