The Lyttelton Times

Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 67, 17 April 1852, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times

April 17, 1852. Our readers will, we hope, make allowance for the publication of only half the ordinary Supplement. A holiday week, and the absence of one of our hands by illness rendered it impossible to get up the ordinary amount of matter in time.

The question which has most prominently engaged public attention of late, is that connected with the road. After the public meetings which were held ; upon the subject, it may be assumed that the settlers were of one mind. It seemed to be generally agreed on all hands that the best thing for the settlement, would be that a sum of money sufficient to complete the road should be obtained by loan, and that the general revenues of the settlement, together with the Land fund should be made security for the debt. Sir George Grey was asked whether he would consent to such an arrangement : without answering that question, his Excellency unexpectedly arrived in the settlement, and offered a sum of £5000 at once, with which to re-com-mence the workj —£2,500 of which consisted of the surplus revenue of our settlement, and the remainder was to be considered as an advance from the General Revenues of the colony, to be repaid out of the accruing revenues of the settlement.

If this course were not thought advisable the other alternative entertained by his Excellency was, that the surplus revenues of the settlement alone should be expended upon less expensive public works on the plains, and that the re-commencement of the Sumner road should be postponed, until larger funds for its completion were available.

By these proposals the settlement was taken by surprise ; unanimity, which had previously existed, was at once destroyed ; and in the absence of any legitimate mode of obtaining the opinion of the community, great dissatisfaction has arisen.

It is certainly hard to choose between the rival schemes. As a general rule, the Lytteltonians are " roadians," whilst the dwellers on the plains are " anti-roadians." The arguments of the latter may be stated thus: —" £SUOO is but one-sixth of the sum required to complete the road—but onethird of that n-cessary to make a road only twelve feet broad ; £6000 has been already sunk in the road, which money is for the present lost. If £5000 more be spent, and the work remain still unfinished, that too will be for the time unproductive ; whereas if we spend the surplus revenues in roads on the plains, it will be immediately and highly productive, and we can postpone the road until we are richer ; in fine, the resources of the colony ought not to be exclusively applied to the Sumner road, to the neglect of every other public work in the settlement."

On the other hand, those who agree with his Excellency's original proposal, say, "£SOOO is quite a sufficient sum, with which to re-commence tha work, for it would not be possible without injury to the private employers of labour in the settlement, to spend more than £500 a month on one public work. If we wait until we see our way to the whole sum requisite to complete the road, we shall probably wait for ever. If the Governor had waited to commence any road until he had had .funds sufficient to finish it, the miles of road which he has opened in New Zealand, would not exist. Sir George Grey has* done more than he was asked to do, for he

has anticipated the wish of the settlers that the Provincial Council should be empowered to borrow the money, by advancing money himself to commence the work." We have reason to believe that the majority of the settlers agree with the former of the views here stated; they think it better to open up fresh land on the plains than to commence the Sumner road with so small a sum as £5000 ; and any one who walks along the roads already made must feel the force of this opinion. Every mile of road so mase brings so much fresh land into cultivation, and so hastens the period when the colony will be self-supporting. The moment a road is made, the land on either side is occupied either by th? proprietor or by cottagers who i-ent or'•■•■purchase a few acres, and in a few weeks the face of the country becomes changed. Any one who visited Papanui last year ? and will walk along the new road just now being: completed, to the village which has sprung up, in the neighbourhood of the bush, cannot but be strongly impressed with the immediate advantage of opening up lines of road on the plains ; and this is no doubt the reason why the majority of those living on the plains approve of the expenditure of the surplus revenues on such works.

But notwithstanding all this we are inclined to the contrary opinion. In the first place we think that if the Lyttelton and Christchurch road is to be made at all, the Canterbury Association having failed to complete it, it must be accomplished by the Government ; and if so, all the funds which the Government has at its disposal ought to be devoted to that object. If the road be not commenced with £5,000 in hand, we cannot conceive when it will be commenceoi' The demurring to Sir George Grey's proposal appears to us a virtual abandonment of the. work altogether; for we really belJßjve that if that road be not completed within a short time, it will be abandoned, and then of course Lyttelton will be deserted, and all the property invested there will be utterly lost.

The shipping port of this place is naturally determined by the spot where the lines of land and water carriage intersect. Wherever the goods are transferred from carts to boats, or from boats to carts, there will be all the stores, and there the place of business. It is absurd, to suppose that goods will be shipped at Christchurch Quay, carried round to Lyttelton, landed and carted to the Stores there—carted down again— re-shipped in boats and then sent on board vessels. Wherever the carts stop, the goods will be stored, and thence immediately shipped on board the vessels. The same arguments exactly are true respecting imports. At present a bale of goods is brought from the ship, landed at the Jetty at Lyttelton, carted up to a store —carted down again—re-shipped in a small vessel, and sent round to Christchurch Quay. It is clear this cannot last; if the land carriage is not made to extend to Lyttelton, the water carriage must be made immediately to extend to the neighbourhood of Chestchurch. Now the water carriage cannot "fe, left in its present condition : owing to*tlre difficulties and uncertainty of the navigation, the boats can only occasionally make a voyage, so that the boats and crews nrffst be kept for a week or a fortnight,- in order to perform one voyage which, when it can be made, takes only six hours. This is the secret of the high freights to Christchurch, as long as this lasts, nothing can lower them. The expense of keeping the boats in idleness until they can make the voyage round, must be included in the freights at present paid. It is apparent that the dwellers on the plains are paying an enormous sum, (the majority of which goes into the pockets of the publicans at Lyttelton,) absolutely for

nothing. If the boats could pass backwards and forwards from Lyttelton to the Heathcote without delay, the cost of water carriage would be so small that it would always be cheaper than land carriage, if the road were finished ; but the cost of such water carriage as exists at present, which is only occasionally available, must always be dearer than carriage by a road which is always open. Again, it must be considered that the traffic between Lyttelton and the plains is very changeable in its amount: sometimes as for example when there have been one or two emigrant ships in harbour, boats enough cannot be found to do the work, and of course the freights are affected by the scarcity. Again, at times, as at present, trade is so slack that there is little for the boats to do. Hence the freights in the busy times must be ' sufficient to cover the losses in the slack times. It may be argued that this applies equally to carriage by land : we say no—the road is always there—always open. The majority of settlers have carts or drays; none of them have boats ; and the cost of using their own carts, horses, and servants, would not be felt, whereas the boat hire is an additional charge. To allow matters to remain in their present state is madness. The waste of capital to a settler newly arriving in the colony is so large as to become a most alarming drawback to the prosperity of the Settlement. This waste must be stopped, the settlers cannot go on paying the boatmen day after day for hanging about the public houses in Lyttelton, waiting till the wind is fair or the bar smooth. If, therefore, there be no immediate prospect of getting the road, we must apply ourselves to the next best thing—straightening the passage over the bar, and getting a steamer to ply between Lyttelton, and the Heathcote river. We shall be forced to do this ; ;yet it involves serious consequences ; for if there shall once grow up a mercantile interest on the bauks of the Heathcote ; if wharf and stores shall be built before the road to Lyttelton be opened, the merchants will go to live at Christchurch, and thenplaces of business will be removed to the plains, and steamers will keep up the communication with ships in the harbour. It will then become the interest of the merchants to prevent the completion of the road, and to remove Lyttelton to the neighbourhood of Sumner. Therefore, we fear if the road be not made soon it will not be made at all—the plan of the Settlement will have changed. But we entirely coincide with the "road report," that the plan as conceived by Captain Thomas was much the best. And, therefore, we regret that the majority of the Settlers should have preferred the expenditure of the Surplus Revenues in roads on the plains, instead of accepting Sir George Grey's proposal to re-open the works on the Sumner road.

Since writing the above the following Memorial has been placed in our hands. It has, we understand, been transmitted to his Excellency, signed by 116 of the inhabitants of Lyttelton. It fully bears out our account of th^ state of feeling at Lyttelton, and with the object of the memorial we entirely agree, but the manner in which it has been got up, is a matter for great regret. Any memorial professing to convey to his Excellency the opinions of the settlers generally, ought to have been laid before the public at large." Without such publicity, it has no pretence whatever to be considered as an expression of the opiuion of the people. But the prominent feeling on our minds is one of shame and regret as hearing a large body of Englishmen, style the apprc>priation°of the surplus revenues of the settlement to local pur-

poses of the settlement an act of" Munificence!" Munificence to spend our own money—money paid out of our own pockets, earned by our own labour—upon our own objects ! Lyttelton, April Bth, 1852. To His Excellency Sir George Grey, Governor-in-Chief of New Zealand. The undersigned inhabitants of Lyttelton, in the settlement of Canterbury, beg respectfully to represent to your Excellency that they have heard with surprise and regret that at a meeting ■of Magistrates in this district it was recommended the surplus revenue of the settlement (which your Excellency munificently offered to devote to local improvement), should be expended otherwise than on the works of the road connecting the Port town of Lyttelton, with Christchureh and the plains. The undersigned, however, beg respectfully'to represent to your Excellency that they consider the above work as of vitil importance to the prosperity of the whole settlement, and desire the completion thereof before all other works. They also represent that the decision come to at the meeting of Magistrates and others can in no way be considered to represent the feeling of the settlers generally, and trust that the great and important work above referred to will still continue to be viewed by you with that favourable opinion with which you have heretofore regarded it, and lead to the works connected therewith being speedily resumed.

We are glad to see the importation of sheep still continues. The " Twins" landed 180 head in Gollan's Bay yesterday.