The Globe. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1877.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 820, 7 February 1877, Page 2

The Globe. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1877.

The Drainage Board, it atoms, is determined to stick by its colours, or at least by those of its consulting engineer, in the matter of adopting wholly or in a modified form, the drainage scheme of that gentleman. Having, at one jump, crossed the Rubicon and that too in a most hasty manner, the gentlemen composing that body have evidently arrived at the conclusion that to retrace their steps would be impossible, that is to say, inexpedient and injudicious, as far as their dignity is concerned. The Board swallowed the scheme, back-bone, limbs, and all, much too readily, and with too hearty a gulp, to give the ratepayers any hope that public opinion, let it be ever so drastically expressed, will, like an emetic, have the effect of making it disgorge the monster. Of course, modifications without number have been thrown out as feelers, and will so continue to be, with a view of deadening the shock to the public mind as much as possible. But what the value of these modifications can be, any one reading the report of the various arguments used at the last meeting of the Board can easily appreciate. The Board, on that occasion, chose to treat the various expressions of opinion which appeared in the local journals—in every case warmly antagonistic to Mr. Carruthers’ ideas —as a mere ebullition of feeling too contemptible evidently to be noticed more than casually. Yet, considering the short time at the disposal of those interested who felt it necessary to raise their voices, and bearing also in mind the unanimous manner in which the local press took up the cudgels in the same direction, we cannot conceive how the Board could treat with so much levity those strong and many denunciations against the scheme. We do not, for one instant, urge that the opinion, in matters professional, of say a round dozen of laymen is of greater weight than that of one properly qualified member of a learned profession. Common sense, however, has in other places, always led people situate as the members of the Drainage Board are just now with reference to this outcry, to adopt a middle course; the only one perhaps open in cases of this kind, and one which always succeeds in smoothing things over. Why not submit Mr. Carruthers’ plan to the scrutiny of a committee of competent engineers, who would enquire into the pros and eons raised in the so-called controversy, and report to the Board ? Their decision surely might be considered as final one way or the other, and would, we feel assured, prove satisfactory to all parties concerned —Mr Carruthers perhaps excepted. The Board’s hands would be completely strengthened whatever decision the committee might come to. If adverse to the present scheme, the feeling of self-esteem which has probably made the Board so tenacious of their hastily formed view of the case, would be sapped to its very foundations and the gentlemen composing it might then with that grace and dignity which so becomes them, reverse their former pre-conceived notions on the subject. The expense of such a committee would he trifling when compared with the enormous interests at stake, which popular feeling has very strong reasons to think is in considerable jeopardy at this moment. And then the Board, so far—to quote Sir J. Vogel’s now celebrated expression—have not pretended to be economical — the sum total of the last eleven months’ expenditure to wit, against which there is indeed but little to show but ideas. When a member of the Board, the other day, took upon himself to record it as his opinion that the antagonism to Mr Carruthers’ scheme was confined to a score or two of newspaper correspondents, the gentleman in question was sadly out of his reckoning. Has a single supporter of the Board’s action or of Mr Carruthers’ views given any reason in the public prints for concurring with them ? The reply must certainly be in the negative. And when it was resolved by the Board when it last sat, that copies of the drainage plan should be at once prepared for the purpose of being submitted to the public gaze, was this done with the view of educating the ratepayers in order that public opinion should have free scope for moulding itself in a new direction F This resolution of the Board, by-the-bye, does not seem to show that the Board was so fully convinced that 11 some thirty persons or so were the only opponents of the scheme.” We feel convinced that the Board will not be long kept in suspense, but will find itself rather rudely awakened to the reality that the “ thirty or so” opponents in question represent a very large majority of the tax-paying community ; unless, indeed, the great organ of Cathedral square should

again assume its favourite reversible coat, and once more advocate the other side of the controversy. What must the numberless admirers and patrons of the Lyttelton Times now think of that mighty engine by which the public mind is so paternally moulded ? As soon as Mr. Carruthers’ scheme became officially known, our elastic contemporary, losing not an instant in entering the lists, at once proclaimed, fur and wide, the many beauties and advantages of what it was then pleased to consider a most admirable scheme. Loud blew the trumpet, high sounding were the encomiums lavished upon the Board and its engineer. The period of “ smells” would soon belong to the past; an inodoriferous future was smiling before us, and all that through the wonderful scheme in question. But alas 1 for the mutability of human things 1 Bome people there are who have eyes but cannot see. The Board, the huge Cyclops, would not see, but the Times, Argus-like, had soon satisfied itself, by the immediate application ef its hundred vigilant eyes, that public opinion was unanimous against the scheme, then the reversible garment was suddenly assumed, and —“ What manner of man is this Mr Carruthers ?” —thundered forth the oracle —•“ and into what pestilential future is he driving us ? ” Converts, it is well known, are more ardently zealous than born believers, and it may prove the case in this instance. But then there is no limit to the Times ’ antics—a fact upon the knowledge of which the Board may yet build great hopes.