The Evening Star FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1875.

Evening Star, Issue 3730, 5 February 1875, Page 2

The Evening Star FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1875.

Is it thoughtlessness, ignorance, malevolence, or empty-headedness that leads some of our contemporaries to make continual attacks upon public officers in Dunedin without the shadow of reason 1 There may be occasions when castigatory comments are needed, but the faults that deserve public condemnation are much more rare than the undeserved censure with which the best eSorts of public servants are repaid. Last evening we quoted two instances of this description, one cut from a Southland journal and the other from the ‘ Wakatip Mail.’ The ‘ Southland Times’ compliments our Post Office officials in Dunedin on their “stupidity.” Of course so sagacious a writer must be presumed to have means of information regarding departmental arrangements beyond what fall to the lot of ordinary mortals, or he could not possibly fix upon the failing spot in them. Had he suggested months aoo that on the arrival of a mail the General Post Office should authorise its transmission by special train to Dunedin for the special benefit of forwarding the few Southland letters it might contain, and had the Government directed that to be done, financiers at the next meeting of Parliament would have been curious to know how much the delivery of Farmer Snooks’s letter nine miles from the Bluff, cost the country, when for the sake of some dozen letters and a score of newspapers a train requiring the attendance of at least four men, beside porters, burning so many hundred weight of coals or coke and wearing away the rails, wheels, and axles of the carriages, was dispatched that lie might have the interesting intelligence conveyed to am : This comes hoping that you are well as 1 am at present, thank God for it ; or that Maria Snooks, his' sister-in-law, hvm~ n . * Lothian" -s somwhere m the | Wks confined of a son. oil the sth of November. We doubt very much, had that been done, whether it Would have satisfied our querulous contemporary, for lie could then have pointed out-how much more rapidly a set of carrier pigeons could have conveyed the little mall; and how necessary it is that Farmer Snooks, or Plan£, the Carpenter, should have his family intelligence or Ileece, the squatter, who calls for letters at Invercargill once or twice ashould know a week earlier that his greasy wool had realised a far thing per pound more or less than ho expected. We are equally alive to the necessity for rapid postal communication with the ‘ Southland Times,’ and Vl , i Jam condemn all unnecessary t e ay , but we are not so ready to jump at the conclusion that officials, who g^neia y evince praiseworthy energy in performing their duties, are “stupid” because they have not the means at fonVil rding Tetters to Southland m the style he suggests. Equally unjust are the remarks of the Wakatip Mail' on the amusements lor forwarding Queenstown. One would have thtMit

that before penning such a para* graph as that which w© quoted at least some little information would be given of the possible accommodation to be found on the road. Did the editor of the ‘ Wakatip Mail’ imagine that the immigrants so earnestly asked for by a deputation to the Superintendent, and forwarded to suit their views, were to travel in all the State of the Empress Catherine of Russia, and that roads were to be levelled, bridges made, and houses built for their accommodation? Two American waggons form very much better sleeping berths, and could b® arranged, both in “ a moral and physical point of view,” very much more for the comfort of those who travelled by them than could the wayside accommodation. Many of us have had to rough it for weeks with a bag of chaff for a bed, another for a pillow, and a loaded dray for our canopy. On such accommodation as that, which by the way proved both enjoyable and healthy, an American waggon is a vast improvement. We very much doubt if the employers of these immigrants will be willing to be at the expense of providing superior sleeping accommodation for those whose services they profess themselves so anxious to obtain. If they are, they are very much in advance of the settlers in many other parts of .the Province. When next Queenstown applies to his Honor for immigrants, we recommend, a# a preliminary to his consent, that the conditions on whicli they ar® to be sent up the country shall be that the applicants shall provide coach accommodation, pay each immigrant a pound a day travelling expenses, provide a chaplain to watch over their morals on the road and to see that the single men and women do not flirt with each other, and pay the expenses of the immigration agent, who shall precede them as an avant courier charged with making arrangements for their stages, meals, and sleeping accommodation, and morning and evening prayers. If they will consent to do this, the pious fears of the ‘Wakatip Mail’ will be allayed, and Queenstown will be favored with a model set of immigrants—always provided similar sensitiveness in the way of sleeping and living is displayed by employers in accommodating their servants as by the ‘ Wakatip Mail.’ Our up-country contemporary, like many of his class, ie never content; if the Government does not do anything for Queenstown, the place is said to be unjustly neglected ; if it does, it does not do enough, or does it wrong; if it does it well, it might have done better—nothing satisfies. But above all the progress of Dunedin is an eyesore; in common with seme other journals in the interior and in Southland, the * Wakatip Mail’ appears suffering from literary dyspepsia which jaundices all its views. A return to health may tend to increase its usefulness and success.