The Globe. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1877.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 830, 20 February 1877, Page 2

The Globe. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1877.

As far as we can judge from what fell here and there from some of the members of the Drainage Board present at the Christchurch and at the Woolston meetings, the agitation so unanmously got up by the public against Mr. Carruthers' scheme, will have about as much effect upon the majority of the gentlemen sitting at the Board as a shower of rain has upon a duck's back. And we can scarcely be astonished at the immovability of the Board, when assailed as it has been by public opinion. To them, the latter is dimply pitting itself, in matters professional, against men of recognised standing in their profession, such as Messrs Carruthers and Wright are popularly supposed to be. Moreover, in this extraordinary battle of words and opinions between the Board and the ratepayers, the contending parties do not even join issue as to the veritable four corners of the debateable questions under argument. And, in professional differences of opinion, if leading facts are nob admitted, it is simply impossible to fairly discuss the merits of the case. But in this controversy between the Drainage Board and the public we may go farther. The Board naturally saya : —" Well, gentlemen, if you choose to demolish, of course you are prepared with the wherewithal to re-establish another Btruoture." And it ia evident that the public is in no way prepared with any such structure, if we perhaps except Dr. Turnbull who, at the Woolston meeting, stated at considerable length what means should be adopted to drain the district. But then the member for the Heathcote riding has no claim to engineering qualifications, and neither the Board nor the public could for one instant listen to any proposal made by laymen. The Board, it must be said, when first entrusted with the duties of getting the machinery of the Drainage Act under way, wont to what, at the first blush, it thought must be the highest authority iu engineering matters, viz.: the Engiueer-in-Chief of the colony. Certain];/ Mr. Carruthers, it was well-known, had never had any experience whatever in drainage questions. But then, where was the Board to go, unless it be prepared to extend its researches as far as England—to secure the services of a qualified person in that special branch of the profession. It is much to he regretted, we think, that the Board did not endeavour to procure from Europe, if necessary, an engineer skilled in matters appertaining to the drainage of towns. As far the waste of time goes, twelve months have now elapsed since Mr .Carruihers first began to work for fch^

Board, and what he has produced in exchange for the £ISOO spent upon that wonderful scheme of his, could certainly have been executed in three weeks. In those twelve months, the Board might have procured, several times over, everything required for the purposes of setting on foot a proper drainage scheme. At home, the engineering profession is subdivided, as that of the law, into various branches, having little or no connection one with another. There are such men as divorce, conveyancing, and criminal courts' lawyers, each following that branch of the profession only in which he has selected to practice. And so it is with engineers, especially with men of eminence, each selecting a particular branch of the profession with a view of making it a specialty. Of course, we received the assurance at the Woolston meeting from the lips of the two members of the Drainage Board present, that they had not the slightest intention of throwing over Mr Carruthers, but that, on the contrary, that gentleman's scheme would be steadfastly carried out by the Board. The refrain of the song droned out by the Board is a simple one : —"Katepayers are quite mistaken in their opposition ; neither the Board nor Mr Carruthers have any intention ol doing those naughty things which a blind public, which cannot evidently comprehend the scheme even it placed before its very nose, lay at their doors." And as Mr Carruthers is the Board's engineer, and as the Board has not discovered any grounds whatever in the popular clamour, then will the Board firmly stick to him and to his scheme. At neither meeting, it is evident, did any of the resolutions go sufficiently for. Had, for instance, a motion been carried, such as we suggested some days ago should be brought forward, to the effect that Mr Carruthers' scheme be submitted to a board of engineers to report upon, something tangible would have been before the Drainage Board, which they would scarcely have dared to set aside. The great argument in favour of those gentlemen is, that one professional man's opinion is worth that of every layman under the sun, and it is not to be wondered at, the stand they are taking in consequence. Were the verdict of a committee of professional men, such as we suggest should be placed on record, found adverse to Mr Carruthers' engineering views, the course of procuring the highest possible opinion from England, which the Board should have adopted at the outset, would then become feasible and practicable. As things now are, there is nothing before us but a deadlock. The Board will not evidently move a step further than it has done. It is prepared to eat some of its minor words or to throw dust into the people's eyes, but nothing more; and, out of the many resolutions unanimously carried at the two public meetings last week, there is really nothing substantial for the gentlemen, who will have to consider them at their next sitting day, to act officially upon, without doing the greatest possible wrong to their engineering adviser, Mr. Carruthers, whose professional opinion, as things now stand, they are bound in honour to recognise. Therefore we see but one way to get out of this state of unpleasantness, and that is, as we said beibre, to get professional pressure to be brought to bear upon that against which no layman's opinion can possibly have any weight, as far as the official connection between the Board and its engineer is concerned. The reputation of the latter is, to a certain extent, at stake ; at least he has a right to take that view of it; and the Board would certainly inflict a grievous injury upon its engineer by allowiug public opinion, not backed by professional advice, to stigmatise his scheme as unfeasible and dangerous.