The Weekly Times. Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1868. THE MAILS VIA PANAMA.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 2, Issue 59, 17 February 1868, Page 43

The Weekly Times. Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1868. THE MAILS VIA PANAMA.

B,at ; wUli, fancy,Ti>e, inclined- to?unite& with soine of the Provinces

ing the Panama mail service as “an expensive luxury,” beyond the means of the Colony, or as conferring no benefit at all edequate to its cost. From its first inauguration the convenience'of our Province has been ignored by the Government, and in all the frequent changes that have been made in the dates of arrival and departure of the mail steamers. Hawke’s Bay has fared badly. For several months in succession it was our fate to chronicle the transmission of the outward mails before the inward mail had arrived, and though some part of the reason for this was to be found in the fact of the nonarrival of the mails at Wellington at the appointed time, the greater part of the blame was to be attached to a faulty time-table; which necessitated our despatching our mails many days before the actual departure of the steamer conveying them from Wellington. The scheme which came to its termination last month was, perhaps, the best for the convenience of this Province that had been adopted, as it usually gave us three or four days for reply; but it was very short-lived, and now” we witness a return to a system which will always preclude any but actual town residents from availing themselves of the return mail for replying to correspondence, and which will, in the event of the slightest’departure from punctuality on the part of the ocean steamers in their arrival at Wellington, be the same with town residents also.

It must be understood that the ’only steamers subsidised by the Government for carrying the mails on this coast is that which is intended to bring our mails via Suez and Panama on the 2/ th, which also carries away our mail via Panama the. next day to Auckland for transmission via the West Coast to Wellington ; and that which takes oui mail via Suez on the 15th. As this fatter will generally reach England at an earlier date than the succeeding mail via Panama, it will be principally used for correspondence; and as we are supposed to receive both mails at the same time, it is hard to perceive the benefit we in Hawke’s Bay are found to derive from the Panama service, beyond, perhaps, the occasional receipt of a few days’ later news.