The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26, 1876.

Evening Star, Issue 4030, 26 January 1876, Page 2

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26, 1876.

It is to be regretted that men like Mr E. B. ILLIE3 are movers in what must be regarded as a most senseless agitation. They are endeavoring to rouse it 6 ?® 0 P le of Dunedin against the action of the Corporation in placing the Fever Hospital on the Town Belt. What their motives are it is difficult to comprehend, but we may gather from the small number who signed the memorial presented to the City Council, and the still smaller who attended the meeting last evening, that the whole proceeding may be classed with the bombast of the three tailors in Tooley street, who dubbed themselves “the people of England.” It is amusing to read the reasons assigned by urch malcontents for their discontent. Mr Prosser objects to the hospital having been placed near the road, although we apprehend had it been placed where there was no road to it he might have based his protest on much safer grounds. It is not his opinion that there is danger of infection to passershy, but he is afraid people will be “frightened.” He may take comfort to himself, however, through the reflection that men are not so easily frightened as to imagine the fever sporules are likely to do them harm while passing a building at a respectable distance, requiring only half a second to traverse its length; or should there be any one so nervous as to torture himself with imaginary terrors, he can easily dodge the enemy by turning out of his course a short distance should it be needful to keep to windward of the hospital. He will be quite safe then. So far as Mr Prosser s objection is concerned, it may simply be dismissed with Sir William Thornhill’s expletive, “ fudge.” Mr R. Gillies and Mr E. B, Cargill deal in thunder of a more uproarious character, intended to create a row. “ Gentlemen, citizens of Dunedin, ” they tell us “ our rights k and privileges are in danger through the action of our own elected agents,' This is really most alarming. What are we to do ? Some thirty years ago Mr Gillies tells us this City was hedged round with a belt, intended for the “ recreation ” of the inhabitants. No doubt he knows, although we have an idea that the intention of those who belted Dunedin was far more practical, and that they had a notion it would be a quiet-going happy valley, in which the Pilgrim Fathers might lead a life of half-work, half day-dream, while their dairy cows grazed quietly after their own fashion on the Town Common, alias Town Belt, returning home at milking time at night, and marching back again after being milked next morning. But man cannot see thirty years in advance. Dunedin is not an Arcadia, but a busy, thriving, bustling, manufacturing and trading port, the inhabitants of which are more profitably employed than in cabbage gardening and looking after a couple of cows. So busy have they been for thirty years that that place of recreation—the Town Belt—has never been even reclaimed from a state of nature, but has been left to furnish its due quota of pestiferous malaria to the other fever-breeding influences with which Dunedin is plagued. Now this belt extends for miles. Whether or not it was intended for amusement matters little to the purpose. The question at issue is, whether on an emergency, siich as is supposed to have occurred in the history of the City, a hundred feet of the belt or less shall be rendered useful for an urgent public purpose or not. The case presents itself thus : there are other reserves on which the hospital could have been erected, but they are surrounded by dense populations, not only liable to be “frightened,” which would not be a very terrible visitation, but absolutely liable to infection through proximity to a fever hospital. To erect euch^a

structure in situations of that class would be worse than insanity; if the people insisted on such a course it would be nearly equivalent to, and certainly analogous with atUCrde. To place a fever hospital anywhere within the City, when a site can be obtained without its limits, would be to form a nucleus from which possibly infection might radiate in every direction. We merely name this as a possibility, for the law of transmission of infection being imperfectly known, theoretically there is a risk that such might be the case. Possibly there might be no danger: but this much is certain, that by placing the hospital where it is such a contingency is avoided. Had that not been done, safety would have required going beyond the belt, beyond the bounds of the City, beyond the jurisdiction of the Health Officer or the Corporation, beyond ready access of friends and relatives of the sick. It would have led to the invasion of the ‘‘rights and privileges” of some suburban hamlet, whose people would have reason to protest against the exportation of fever patients from Dunedin to their neighborhood. None are more ardent advocates for “rights and privileges” than ourselves, and among them we class foremost the “ right and privilege” of the inhabitants to put to good public use that ground which, although it is said was given for recreation, has for thirty years never been required for such a purpose, but which is now wisely and benevolently devoted to a higher and holier public use—the cure of fever in those attacked—the prevention of fever .to those in health. Golf clubs et id genua o/nne may use the Belt, although theyjare private institution*, from the “rights and privileges ” of which the public are excluded, unless they choose to pay. Messrs Cargill, Prosser, and Co. do not protest against them. Which is r the higher privilege ?To send a ball some 200 yards without hitting anybody or breaking a window, or to place a suffering human being in circumstances favorable to the restoration to health, and to save a City from danger of infection ? Instead of condemning the action of the Corporation, we should have expected to see men professing to be advocates of the public welfare supporting the course adopted. Not having learned to see evil in an unmixed good, we have no hesitation in asserting that the selection of the site of the Fever Hospital has entitled the Corporation to the thanks of every family in the City, and the common sense of the people will endorse that opinion.