The Evening Star. SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 1871.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2523, 18 March 1871, Page 2

The Evening Star. SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 1871.

Perhaps those who dining t}ic late ■ elections so loudly paraded :their .conviction that the action of the Generali Government with regard to the construction of the Cl nth a Railway was a sham, will to-day acknowledge they were mistaken. Seven years have passed in vain attempts by the Provincial Government to have it made, and judging from the future by the past, seven years more would have gone over our heads at least before its completion. True, Mr Reid’s friends, driven into a corner, and compelled to produce some scheme as an excuse for what they asserted, had a tender to fall back upon. But when the extraordinary character of the proposal is considered, no one acquainted with business can, for one moment, believe Mr Reid would have dared to have closed with it. Had it been made six or seven years ago, the Province would by this time have been reaping the benefit of railway communication, and, to a certain extent, the extra cost would have been recouped before now. But to have adopted the scheme of paying eight per cent, when five and a half will do, and to have spent four hundred thousand pounds instead of three hundred thousand, would have been so gross and palpable a waste of Provincial capital, that not even a clodocracy could have tolerated it now that the excitement of the election is over. We hardly know whether to consider the delay that has taken place in commencing the Clutha line an advantage or a disadvantage. Had it been proceeded with when first determined upon, we should, by this time, have had years of benefit from it. On the other hand, the cost would have been very much greater. New Zealand, in regard to its railways, will stand in a very much better financial position than any of the Australasian Colonies. The advance of the knowledge of the mechanics of railways has dissipated many of the generalisations the early engineers had arrived at. Brunbl’s magnificent theories are proved to involve very unnecessary expenditure in material and motive power ; and the grounds on which the Victorian Government was led to spend forty thousand pounds a mile, are proved to be groundless. The Port Chalmers and Clutha Railways are the first of a new series in the Colonies. Gradually the conviction has been growing that the speed and traction power necessary for a Colony, can be secured at a very moderate outlay. This is the more essential, for, rapid as has been the advance of knowledge in the mechanics of motion during the last fifty years, there are indications that our present appliances,

perfect as they seem, may at no distant day be superseded. What a few years ago would have beeu deemed an idle dream of a maundering visionary, is quite likely to be accomplished within the next twenty years. The power of guiding themselves in air, may be added to that which men possess of passing through the waters as safely as a fish, or travelling upon land at a speed and with a continuity superior to the swiftest and most enduring animals. The balloon now renders men independent of the cordon of an army, although they are at present obliged to allow themselves to bo wafted whithersover the wind takes them. The Aeronautical Society have, however, obtained some glimmerings of the means necessary to dispense with the aid of gas ; and should a mechanical arrangement be discovered by which the heavy apparatus necessary for steam power is superseded, it seems pretty certain that the air will be a cheap and pleasant highway from place to place, and the birds will be astonished at the strange monsters with curious -wings competing with them i i their flight. When this takes place, the railway will be a beast of burden, the functions of which will be merely drudging along with heavy loads ef goods, while the owners, having seen them on the trucks, outstepping the train speed, may be disposing of their produce in the market in anticipation of its arrival. This may seem very wild writing, but it is not wilder than the idea suggested by the late George Stephenson seemed to the Committee of the House of Commons, of travelling twelve miles an hour on a railroad ; nor more improbable than running a steamer across the Atlantic appeared to the late Dr Lakuner. On every ground, therefore, it is essential that the greatest amount of accommodation should be attained at the least possible cost consistent with efficiency, and this valuable economy of money is one of the objects aimed at in the system of public works adopted by the General Government. Our Clutha Railway is the first instalment. It must have been gratifying to his Excellency the Governor to have had his name so intimately associated with the earliest conquest of peace in the Colony; and equally pleasing to the JTon. Mr Gisborne to be in Dunedin ~W; h en the .first fruits of the plans that (the (Government of which he is a meinber w;ere inaugurated, and which car;i;ied ( Wt pvoye so beneficial to the (Colony-