The Evening Star FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 1873.

Evening Star, Issue 3278, 22 August 1873, Page 2

The Evening Star FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 1873.

We look upon the resolutions passed at the meeting yesterday evening as very unimportant, so far as altering the railway route is concerned. Most of them might be adopted without in the slightest degree interfiring with the shortest and cheapest line from Moeraki to Dunedin. The exception was the resolution moved by Mr Stout, who seems to have been selected as the gentleman best able to deal with a clap-trap proposition. The style of his oratory is eminently calculated to cast discredit upon resolutions passed at a public meeting. He seems to seize at once upon a weak point, and to invest it with the apparent importance of being the centre of his position. His task was to urge the importance of the Moeraki line of railway forming a junction with the Port Chalmers line at Black Jack’s peint—a position that Mr Gillies, with very superior technical knowledge, wisely declined to commit himself to. The powerful logic, too, by which the

proposition was supported was delightful to listen to. “It has been said,” Mr Stout averred, “ that the meeting was not able to judge of the best route for a railway, because it was an engineer’s question; but Mr Fish advocated the railway workshops being in Dunedin : was not that an engineer’s question too f And Mr Stout looked up to the boxes and down into the pit to see the effect this telling bit of claptrap had upon his auditors. It is hardly necessary to say that, strictly speaking, it is not an engineer’s question where railway workshops may be most advantageously situated ; but a social and mercantile one. It is a question whore labor is most plentiful and appliances the cheapest ; where, in fact, the greatest amount of work can be done at the cheapest rate. It is a mechanic’s question, and though there may be mechanical engineers employed at the works, they are not engineers in the sense in which Mr Stout spoke of railway engineers or aurveyors. They can fulfil their duties quite as well in Dunedin, and perhaps more cheaply, than at Mussel Bay. Mr Stout should know well that when the route of a line of railway is under consideration, the cost and distance should determine the choice. To enter the Port Chalmers line at the Port will no more make Port Chalmers the terminus than the junction of the Midland, Leeds and Manchester, Hull and Selby, and York and North Midland lines at Normanton, has made that station a terminus. Passengers for Dunedin will pass on to Dunedin, no matter what route is adopted, and where seven or eight miles of railway are already made and available, it is idle waste of money to propose to throw away thirty, forty, fifty, or, we believe, one hundred thousand pounds in the construction of a line, the only effect of which will be to increase the cost of working the whole. However, the fact was made plain that the object of the meeting was altogether different. It was whether the harbor should or should not be deepened, so as to make Dunedin, instead of Port Chalmers, the shipping port. This is altogether another affair. It really has nothing to do with the best line of railway. Which way soever the line of railway may be brought in from Moeraki, the harbor may be deepened. There is no occasion to spend an extra sixty thousand pounds to secure that advantage. It would be doubling the cost to the Province. In fact, it is just as much the interest of Dunedin to have the cheapest, shortest, and best route if it is made the shipping port, as it is, should Port Chalmers remain the Port of Dunedin. Assuming the route by Black Jack’s Point to be the best, let it be made ; if that by Deborah Bay, by all means join the Port Chalmers line there. The port will then, like Geelong, only be a passing station. The whole proceedings remind one of the wise man of Thessaly, which, for the edification ot our readers, we will relate :

There was a man of Thessaly, And he was wondrous wise ; He jumped into a quick-set hedge And scratched out both his eyes. And when he saw his eyes were out, With all his might and main He jumped into another hedge To scratch them in again. Like this wise man, we Dunedin people were hot for the construction of a railway to the Port, which was to do marvels for us. We got one at a cost of LI 70,000, and now find that its effect is to make the Port at the expense of Dunedin. We scratched our eyes out. We now propose to scratch them in again by spending much more money than is necessary—even to the extent of doubling the cost of our harbor works—to scratch out the eyes of the Port. A very wise proceeding to chuckle over ! And this is what the Daily Times calls benefiting Dunedin. Wise Times!