The Evening Star SATURDAY, MAY 15, 1875.

Evening Star, Issue 3814, 15 May 1875, Page 2

The Evening Star SATURDAY, MAY 15, 1875.

Thk meeting of citizens convened by the Mayor for Monday evening Is likely to be a stormy one. As to whether Princes street should be widened or not, no two ratepayers appear to be agreed. It baa been publicly urged that now the railway is completed through the traffic will not increase, and that therefore what would have been right, if done four or five years ago, will be wrong if done now. This is a great blunder. Looking at Dunedin as it is and as it was only five years ago, and then taking into consideration the effects sure to follow the completion of the railways on either side, we are driven to an irresistible conclusion that all the land down below tho recreation ground and behind the gasworks will be too valuable to remain as sites for cottages and small villas. That is the direction in which the manufac turing centre will be. Wo are also inclined to think that the permanent goods station will have to be in the same direction for want of room in its present site. It can be hardly doubted that the traffic in Princes street south will, under these altered conditions, be beyond what it has ever been before. Asa matter of policy, let the street be widened if possible, f It does not follow that the arbitration and all that led up to it was what it should be. The meeting will do well to keep two issues before it. Is it expedient to widen the street at all? Has the arrangement between the Corporation and the lessees been brought about creditably ? The of these issues is by far the more important, although ws are positively cat tain it will be lost sight of in the personal and questions that will be sure to crop up. A third issue also occurs to us yHas not the Corporation received certain valuable concessions from the Government on the indirect pledge that Princes street should be widened? At all events, the legal objection ought not to be allowed whatever it may b.-,-worth—to lend itself to a breach of faith. If power only is what is wanted that can very easily be obtaincl. On the money question, wo hold strongly that it would bo a gross and culpable waste of the citizens’ money to expend L 40.000 on a work that twelve mouths hence could be carriedout at a fourth its present estimated cost/ In order to illustrate the position of the question so far as the Manse reserve tenants are concerned, the promoters of the meeting have issued a lithographic plan of the properties, and a copy of it should reach the hands of every reader of this issue of the fc-TAR. !