The Evening Star FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1873

Evening Star, Issue 3308, 26 September 1873, Page 2

The Evening Star FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1873

In tho remarks we are about to make, the Dally Times will be lifted into undue prominence. Our apology for thus conferring undeserved favor upon it must be that when we shall have done its position will be rather lower than before, and will thus compensate for having accorded to it unwonted publicity. The Daily 1 hues treated its readers on Wednesday to an illogical sequence of sentences, intended to show that the present Dunedin railway passenger station was, on the whole, scarcely better than the proverbial closet in which a cat cannot be swung, and was rather worse than the Slough of Despond. On this account it argued that the present barns should be pulled down, and greater and more permanent ones erected in their stead. But under no circumstances should the site of the station be changed. Its present position is a merciful dispensation of Providence, and its retention of that position will bo due to the united efforts of this same Providence and the Otago Daily Times. Before we proceed to show that the Times had stronger grounds than those advanced for coming to the conclusions it did, we may perhaps remark that, though the present passenger station is far from being perfect, it is by no means uu,suited for the temporary purpose it is intended to serve; and, moreover, that its site can merely be regarded as one for the present time, to be speedily changed for one permanent and more convenient. With a ponderous levity, such as might be looked for in a jocular rhinoceros, tho Times contrasted the treatment undergone at the station by crates of china with that undergone by Christians; and decided in favor of the former. Unfortunately, in doing this, it trusted to memory for language, and to imagination for facts. More than one case in the Resident Magistrate’s Court have shown that, despite every effort to overtake it, the goods traffic on the Port Chalmers Railway is growing so fast that goods have suffered unintentional damage through exposure to wet and wind. As regards passengers, exactly the reverse is the case. Except upon special occasions—the departure of a steamer, or the occurrence of a fine Sunday afternoon—the passenger traffic, though fair, is by no means excessive ; and is amply provided lor by the existing accommodation, even though that accommodation is, as we have said, but temporary. As a matter of fact, indeed, we 1 may here say, from experience, that our passenger station is a per- ; feet palace compared with that at Christchurch, where many more lines of railway- are open than wo have here. And yet, knowing that, even in Canterbury, the railways are i merely, practically speaking, being initiated, the Canterbury people do not go mad because a magnificent building is not erected to serve the purposes of a line which, for some time to come, will commence nowhere and end about the same place. But the fact is that, as the lines in Otago now in course of formation become completed, it will be found absolutely necessary to shift the passenger station to a suitable place, and then it will be high time to put up such accommodation as will contrast favorably with that of older and more finished railway systems. Having said thus much, let ns redeem onr promise to give the Times more cogent reasons than those it used for the conclusion at which it arrived. And, having tolerably fresh in our memory instances in Victoria, where stations, which in themselves formed small schools of architecture, were put up at place's containing no greater population than a few charcoal burners and a good many kangaroos, but convenient, as they say in Ireland, “ to thee property of some powerful man’'—having those things in our mind, we say, we can readily see how powerfully a proposal to remove tho station would affect the Daily 7Vme,s-,and how much interest its proprietary would ’ naturally take in having a very handsome station put up on the existing site. For of course wo arc all aware of the very pretty office which has been lately built for tho Daily Times in tho neighborhood of the station —an office which, should that station bo made permanent, and improved as the Times suggests, will be, so to speak, on the gangway for business, but which will be in a very unenviable and awkward position should the site of the station be shifted. No one would suspect the Tunes of displaying tho virtuous indignation of Wednesday morning from such selfish motives as those wo have indicated. Admitting how completely it is the custom of that journal to merge its mere private and personal advantage in the public interest, wo cannot conceive it possible that so disinterested a paper should advocate a cause from the same motives that would prevail with the keeper of a greengx-occi-y store. Yet we cannot avoid perceiving that some people will saddle the Daily Times with conduct which, on its part, we deprecate, and this, because such a lino of argument as that which betrays a notorious consideration of self, is frequently .the true process by which tho Times reasons out its conclusions. For ourselves, we do not accuse the paper in question of the motives we have

mentioned, and yet, as the old saying goes, wo have known men hanged, and justly, on much weaker evidence than exists to sheet home a charge of so contemptible a natnre to the Okujo Daily Times.