The Lyttelton Times. Saturday, August 19, 1854.

Lyttelton Times, Volume IV, Issue 189, 19 August 1854, Page 7

The Lyttelton Times. Saturday, August 19, 1854.

There is a strange spirit of pugnacity inherent in English blood. When we have no legitimate subject on which to display it, we begin, a propos of something totally irrelevant, to cry up our own property, and to cry down that of our neighbours. One would have thought that the subject of communication between the Port and the Plains might be discussed calmly and dispassionately in its relation to the interests of the whole Province, without setting its two towns in battle array one against the other. Christchurch is not content to call itself a paradise, but it must call Lyttelton a Wapping ; and Lyttelton cannot congratulate itself on being a compact little port town,|without callingChristchurch a "city of magnificent distances;" and yet it is very certain that one could ill afford to lose the other. We are as little inclined to call one a " mistake," as the other. Lyttelton is the only site for a town, in the only harbour at all accessible to the Canterbury plains; and Christchurch is situated at a convenient distance from the port, at the head of the river navigation, traversed diagonally by a beautiful stream, and accessible to drays laden with the wool and other produce of a vast extent of country. All we want is good communication between Lyttelton and Christchurch. And the sooner we set about effecting this with unanimity the better. One line of argument which has been adopted in order to prove that Christchurch ought to be made the shipping town, we cannot help considering very wrong and totally unfounded. It seems perfectly suicidal madness for any one to go out of their

way, wrongfully to detract from 'the meriv.of the splendid harbour which Providence seems to have placed here for the very purpose of making the vast plains of the Middle Island useful to man. We are not now alluding to the simply foolish and mischievous remarks of our correspondent " Gamma," but to others which might have a very serious influence on the commercial prosperity of this settlement. We have the authority of the Harbour Master to state that, since he has been in office, that is for about two years and a half, not one single accident has happened in this harbour, and that those which happened before his time he is inclined to ascribe to carelessness and want of the commonest precautions. Some of the larger vessels which have anchored here, have not had cables and anchors of sufficient strength to hold a cutter in a gale of wind.

The spirit which dictates such attacks as we have alluded to is the same on a smaller scale as that which breaks out now and then in the different Provinces —which would sacrifice the whole colony to one individual part of it. We have no doubt that many of those who advocate these extreme views with regard to their own place of residence are perfectly conscientious in their statements. So are the Aucklanders when they declare their belief that Auckland is the proper place for the meeting of the General Assembly ; they may even think that they would be doing right in calling for a separation to the detriment of the rest of New Zealand. The way in which all these differences are looked at by different people only tend to show every day the danger of confining our attention to those interests which are immediately around vs —a danger which, as regards the relations between the Provinces, we may designate by the name of ultra-provincial-ism ; as regards the relations between Lytteltonand Chri^church, ultra-civism. When we have got the denominators fixed, we may proceed to the calculation ; —if ultra-pro-vincialism is contemptible, what is ultracivism ? We do not wish to enter upon the subject of what should be the line of road. That we leave to engineers and practical men, by whose reports we.have no doubt the question will be brought before the public in a better shape than in any other. And we have full confidence that the Provincial Legislature will deal with the question as one relating to the interests of the whole Province, and not as one to be made use of for the benefit of one part of it to the detriment of another.