OUR RAILWAY SYSTEM.

Evening Star, Issue 2943, 25 July 1872, Page 2

OUR RAILWAY SYSTEM.

In an article dealing with the Parliamentary papers by Mr Miltar, F.S.A., on railways in the South Island, the Australasian remarks “ By fixing Lr>,()oo per mile as the maximum of its expenditure on what may be termed the national trunk railways, tlio General Assembly of New Zealand has exhibited a praiseworthy determination to profit by the example of the United States on the one hand, and to avoid the extravagant outlay into which we plunged, when we constructs I oar main lines, on the other. hi or is there any reason to believe that Mr Millar’s estimates are untrustworthy. On the contrary, his calculations are confirmed by the actual cost of a narrow-gauge railway, some fifty miles in length, which the Provincial Government of Otago is executing for the purpose of bringing the capital of that Province into connection with the Southern goldfields. This line is completed in part, and the contract for the whole has been entered into at rates which justify us in saying that the average cost will not exceed LSOUO per mile. In some portions of the railway the expenditure will be no more than L3OOO per mile, and this is about equivalent to the construction and maintenance of a metalled main road.

If the New Zealand railways do not pay, then, it will not be on account of the costliness of their construction, but owing to the paucity of the population which wiil feed them with traffic. A quarter of a million of people to a thousand miles of railroad will remind many persons of the proportion which Falstalfs bread bore to his sack. But as William kilt, when taunted with his youth, retorted upon his censor that this was a fault wuich every day would tend to lessen, so the Government of New Zealand will no doubt rejoin, when it is twitted with the disproportion above referred to, that it will diminish year by year ; and that if it i» burdening posterity with a heavy load of debt, it is also preparing to bequeath to it a property which must, iu course of time, far exceed iu value the loan now being raised for its creation And, as a general principle, it can scarcely be doubted that it is much wiser (<» follow the course which the New Zea'mul Government is new pursuing than to imitate the action of the United States in endowing certain great companies with enormous tracts of land, and thus building up an imperium in imperio within the republic, which may ultimately overawe and control Congress, and perhaps destroy the political institutions of the country. Besides which, such companies as the Pacific and the Central Union must become immensely wealthy by the mere growth of population along the lines of the railway, and by no effort of their own, just as the great landowners of England find their opulence augmented by a similar chain of circumstances. Now, under like favourable conditions in New Zealand, the community or State will

reap the benefit of the inci’easing traffic on the trunk lines of railway brought about by the natural or artificial increment of popular tion ; and the time may arrive when a Treasurer will find himself in the agreeable position of announcing to an applauding Assembly that he is enabled to propose a material reduction in the fiscai burdens of the people in consequence of the increasing revenue yielded to the exchequer by the national rail? ways.