MUCH CRY AND LITTLE WOOL.

Mataura Ensign, Volume VI, Issue 293, 28 September 1883, Page 2

MUCH CRY AND LITTLE WOOL.

The people of Invercargill are just now in a very bad way. They a»-e, in fact, go bad that co outlet for thoir indignation could be found but by means of a public meeting on Saturday evening last. "Someone" has forbidden the running of railway trucks on the jetty.and the cry has gone forth, and the fiery cross has been sent along, to rouse the

Bmouldering ashes of rebellion against the railway authorities for " insulting " the community. Poor " community !" If Invercargill has at length got a community it is first time in her existence she has ever possessed so valuable an article. We have always found more

dis-unity than cowi-munity, in the city of magnificent distances. We are riot speaking with authority, but should be rather inclined to assume that the i privilege of passing goods over the | jetty by means of the railway trucks j-has never been anything else thin one I tacitly allowed by the department and [ never lias been expressly given. There- 1 £ ioiO something has been taken from the f^Affitfg wlhich [ they never really had, and the ntM^r'oI raent is quite justified in refu?,^"-.^ i longer allow a practice which in the opinion of its responsible officers is unsafe. Anybody would imagine from the deafening outcry being made that Invercargill had lost her most treasured i brithright, whereas the privilege has only been in existence since the completion of the jetty siding. The remedy is plain. If the jetty is not safe for loaded trucks let the New Eiver Harbor Board make it so, and they may be sure that the railway authorities will not hamper them in their gigantic shipping operations. But they have wasted their means on a foolish fad. They are much in the position of a builder who has spent his all in erecting the walls of a house and cannot find means to put the roof on. It is a pet crank with a few fossils to lLake th» New Eivpr Harbor a rival to the Bluff Harbor. They point triumphantly to the work done in the Clyde and other British rivers "in support of the feasibleness of their scheme. But they blindly forget that Nature has created another harbor at their door, and that but for the existence of that harbor the town would never have attained even it present importance. We hear nothing but complaints of jealousy and rivalry between other ports and Invercargill: Does not it seem that Invercargill has through the silly actions of a few officious individuals done much to create the very feeling she now so much, deprecates % The fact is that the entrance to New Eiver Harbor presents such natural difficulties as are far beyond the means at the disposal of the Board to remove, and such means would be of much greater benefit to Southland if spent where anything but the mo,s|; interested blindness and ovine tractability could perceive that' Nature designed. Buch a place is Bluff Harbor, and the New Eiver Harbor might be very well reclaimed, at least as far as the moudi 6t .'he river.