The Evening Star. TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1872.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2787, 23 January 1872, Page 2

The Evening Star. TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1872.

Fhom the content with which the people of Port Chalmers bear the physical evils to which they are doomed by the inaction of their Corporation, the world might imagine that they coincided with them. We may, however, be mistaken. The Corporation maybe like the sailors parrot, fustclass thinkers. Unfortunately, the world does not progress by thought only. Thought is a prime mover. No work should be begun without thought. It must take cognizance of ends to be attained, and of the applicability of the means proposed to realise them. It must go over the ground in imagination, comprehend each difficulty, and contrive the machinery to overcome it. But, the way passed over in the mind, and the cost of each step calculated, thought must be reduced to action. Like faith, thought without works is dead. We have no doubt many of the Town Council of Port Chalmers have sat in their easy chairs at night sipping their whisky toddy and whiffing their full-flavored cigars or inhaling the fumes of their pigtail or twist from some highly-colored meerschaum, and as the smoke rose in cix’ding eddies, their calmed, benevolent thoughts were weaving pleasing visions of the blessing they could confer upon the people by giving them a full supply of water. They would see the lovely streamlets on the neighbouring hill sides wasting their sparkling treasure as it rolled and tumbled over stones and down mimic rapids, to waste itself in the salt waters of the Bay. They would ask themselves why the little responsibilities in the Port, that sit in such numbers round the household dinner-tables, covered with soiled table-cloths to save washing, should be allowed to appear at meal time, with features shift with mingled sweat and dust, hot and feverish, to swallow gritty steaks or chops, or drink broth made up of butchers’ meat and tadpoles, when they miolit have been tumbled into a bath, and had the comforts of clean table linen, a change of clothes, rosy cheeks and well-washed hands, chops and steaks broiled in well-cleaned utensils, had those pleasant streams or any of them been made to supply the Town with water. They would follow those children through the various stages of life, supposing things are allowed to remain as they are. They would see that some, delicate of constitution and susceptible to attacks of disease, nurtured thus under unfavorable conditions, would die early—perhaps in a few weeks or months. Others more hardy would struggle on, their naturally delicate skins rendered coarse and rough, their feelings blunted, their sense of taste and smell perverted, tlieir minds degraded. As they grew older, he would see them afflicted with skin diseases, and noisome afflictions, sore eyes, foetid breath—their beauty gone. He would watch them grow up weak in body and depraved in taste. Conscious of physical inferiority to the better cared-for and nurtured, and unconscious that the cause is indolence induced by dirt, they make no effort to rise from their depressed condition, but shunned by the handsome and the healthy in body and mind, they allow themselves to sink into low and grovelling habits, and after years of misery die unhonoured and unregretted. Filled with ardor, he would doubtless go to the next meeting of the Council ready to support a scheme for supplying the town with water : his arguments all prepared—a David x’esolved to do battle with the Goliath, dirt, dust, smoke, damage to man, beast, and merchandise. He would strengthen himself by arguments derived from the prospect of reduced premiums of insurance ; thirty or forty gallons of water per head for each man, woman, and child, at the present cost of empty tubs and water tanks ; cheap supply of water for shipping ; no dirty children ; clean houses ; tidy wives ; spruce husbands ; moral population ; pleasant place for a visit ; strangers flocking in ; prosperous trade ; cheap motive power; iron foundries supplied—all because a pretty stream of water, now merely ornamental—not even a trout stream—has been utilised and made a blessing and a eiviliser. But in Council he meets with opposition : he is overruled, and his zeal dies. This must have been so—or, with the means of realising all this, why has the Mayor had to come forward in his benevolence, while the heavens have been as brass and the earth as iron for so long a time, to place a supply of water gratis for the use of those unable to pay the heavy cost out of their earnings 1 It is the old story over again ; private interest overriding that of the public. For years the question of water supply has been agitated. For years faction has been at work marring every plan that has been proposed, Short-sighted men for private purposes have succeeded in subverting measures,

that adopted, would have enriched them as well as others. Surety the drought of this summer will bring the Town Council to its senses, and lead everyone as he sips his whisky toddy and smokes his meerschaum to see woven in the curling eddies of the smoke, The first duty of a Town Council is to secure a good water supply.