THE CABMEN AND THE COUNCIL.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2143, 7 January 1881, Page 2

THE CABMEN AND THE COUNCIL.

It was, we think, a wise step on the part of the Council to accede to the request of the cabmen in respect to the reduction of the license-fee charged. The cabmen, when before the Council on this matter some little time back, showed that in Christchurch, in this respect, they had to pay higher fees than anywhere else. Such being the case, the reduction asked for, and now granted, seems to bo fair and reasonable. There is just one point in connection with this subject to which we once more desire to draw the Council’s attention —the tramway—which admittedly is a powerful opponent of the owners of licensed vehicles —has now been in full operation for some months, yet no steps have been taken to license them under the Act. The position, then, is this, that the cabmen are not allowed to ply for hire unless first paying a license-fee, whilst the tramway, which comes under the same category of licensed vehicles, escapes scot free. Wo do not for one moment wish to undervalue the public convenience of the tramway, but even-handed justice should be done. To use a homely but expressive aphorism — r ‘ What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” and each licensed vehicle, whether tramway, car, ’bus, or cab, should contribute alike to the city revenue so long as license-fees exist. The Council, we think, has not done justice, and the sooner they repair the error they have committed the better. OUB VERACIOUS CONTEMPORARY. [From the Dunedin “ Star.”] The “ Lyttelton Times” is truly wonderful in its “special correspondents.” Nothing seems too hot or too heavy for this journal to receive from these sources, and frequent exposure of unmitigated mendacity does not seem to affect the tender credulity with which anything damaging to the Ministry is received and conspicuously printed. The last little fib, or, to speak more accurately, one of the last, was telegraphed from Wellington, being to the effect that it was rumoured in the best-informed circles that “a cause of unpleasantness between the Governor and Ministers was threatening, in that Sir Arthur Gordon’s title of High Commissioner of Polynesia takes precedence of that of Governor of New Zealand. “ I am informed,” says truthful Jeames, “ that this has been the subject of an unpleasant discussion, which may lead to a proposal to suspend payment of the Governor’s salary, when Parliament meets, until the >exact nature of his services in connection with the respective appointments is defined. It is argued that full pay should not be given for divided services.” It need hardly be said that this whole story is a “ taradiddle” from beginning to end. There has been neither “ discussion” nor any " threatening of unpleasantness.” The ideas are entirely evoked from the fertile and inventive brain of the “ Lyttelton Times’s” correspondent.