CORRESPONDENCE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 117, 19 May 1871, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

*»* We are desirous of affording every reasonable facility for the discussion of public subjects; but it must be understood that we are in no *way responsible for the opinions expressed by correspondents. To THE EdITOB OP THE NELSON EVENING MAIL Sir, — A correspondent of yours some time ago talked of opening up the country and facilitating communication between Nelson and Canterbury, by erecting another bridge across the Maitai. I am sorry to find your correspondent is not so siugular as I supposed him to be, for I find people, who ought to know better, quite as absurdly talking of opening up the country, by building a railway from Nelson to Foxhill. Driven into a corner, these people will tell you, "Oh ! but we must have the railway, or we shall not get our share of the plunder, and all the other Provinces are getting theirs " Without moralising on the depravity of the thing, and to be as brief as possible, permit me to say if we must be participators in this plunder, in tbe Dame of all that is sane and reasonable let us purchase as useful a thing as we can with it. The money will be circulated just as well. Publicans and others will just as well have their transient prosperity from it, and there will be the useful thing in existence besides. I know from enquiry that carting can be done from the town of Nelson to the mouth of the Clarke for £4 per ton. Now if we must have a Railway, this is the point to commence at. Twenty miles would reach the Owen, other ten or eleven of a properly surveyed line there is every reason to believe would reach the Matakitaki, which would form a central depot for goods to be taken thence to all parts of the diggings. There would be truth in speaking of such a line as this in the seuse of opening up the country, because it would be superseding difficult and crushingly expensive carriage, viz., on horseback on badly laid out roads, whereas the Nelson and Foxhill Railway would only supersede already easy carriage, and would be simply making an already good road a little better. What the Nelson people really want is more customers, what the Province at large, wants is better markets for produce, and a railway or a good cart road, to tap the diggings, as I have hinted at, would bring these, by opening up the fine districts of the Inangub.ua, the Maruia, and Upper Buller generally, as customers to Nelson instead of Melbourne and Sydney. The Foxhill railway scheme, like lighting the city with gas, is but another specimen of making the home comfortable while the farm is all going to wrack and ruin. I am Yours, &c, James Grove. Nelson May 18 1871.