Correspondence.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VIII, Issue 495, 1 August 1857, Page 5

Correspondence.

To the Editor of the Lyttelton Times. 1 3IU> —Being prevented from replying to the letter signed "Steam" in time for your last issue, perhaps you will not consider it too late to msert these lines.

My last letter did not state, as your correspondent alleges, " that the underwriters would have to pay for that proportion of the average to be contributed by the cargo ;" but that, in the event of an accident to the steamer rendering it necessary to part with a portion of her cargo, the underwriters of the steamer would have to contribute their proportion of the general average towards making good the value to the owner of the goods thrown overboard. Thus, supposing goods to the value of £500 to be sacrificed, and the value of the I Entire cargo to be - - £2000 ' Vessel 2500 Freight 150 , , Together .... £4650 the loss would be rather over 10 per cent., and therefore the underwriters of the steamer would have to contribute about £250 as their proportion. It is an easy matter for your corresponpent to boast of his intimate knowledge of insurances, and for him to pooh-pooh another's arguments; but many have had as much experience in these matters as he has, and perhaps more. The mere bragging of his knowledge of the practical working of average statements will pass for little—since he adduces no authority on the subject. The conclusion of his letter as to the effects of mine on this subject is all " bunkum." _ I previously refrained "from retorting upon his allusions to interested motives, but his strong repetition of the same induces me to ask, who, in this small community, can be so strongly interested in the scheme as to write it and the intending contractors up in the eulogistical manner of your correspondent's letters ? Many of your readers will have heard or read of a book called the life of a " showman," by Barnum, in which he describes a knowing dodge of writing under fictitious names in the newspapers laudatory letters on the exhibition he was about to bring before the public. Surely your correspondent cannot have taken a leaf from that little volume. The public of Canterbury are not children to be jerked into a responsibility which should be borne by the subsidised contractors. As I shall not intrude further on your columns, you will perhaps find room for this. Your obedient Servant, SUBSCRIBER. July 31, 1857.