NELSON AND WEST COAST RAILWAY.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VII, Issue 294, 10 December 1872, Page 2

NELSON AND WEST COAST RAILWAY.

, M Q inn - * (From the Grey River Argus, December 2 ) The mighty moral which the Nelson Mail draws from the state of affairs which it so graphically describes in the article which was quoted in these columns oh Saturday amounts simply to this— that the one public work upon which the Superintendent, the so-called Executive, the Provincial Council, and the people ~of the province should exhaust their energies and all available revenue is, a tramway from Nelson City to the Lyell, or even to the Inangahua. With all that our contemporary says ,in a general, way as to the advantages of internal communication, no one can possibly be disposed to disagree, and much that he says as to the propriety of Nelson City being; brought, as it were, nearer to the field for agriculture and mining which exists in the Valley of the Upper Buller will recommend itself to the approval of any onefwho ;has had bpportuV nities of ascertaining the desperate state of dulpess into whjch kelson has of , late . years declined, and the extent and value of j; the territory : ;interoecte3|by : ;ttie fyßiiijer >ahd its tributaries. ! ,But {sympathy With the sentiments i of the —at aDy rate emoag those who are aware

of the principles of account keeping upon which "" the cost of constructing roads to the Upper Buller has bunerto been charged, and who distinguish the aim of the arguments used in advocating this new work. Hitherto, and especially during toe last session of the Council, it has been the practice to make road-works which were essentially beneficial to Nelson cily and its surroundings a charge upon Goldfields revenue exclusively. The very works which are now in course of progress in the direction of the Lyell from the Nelson end of the province are debited solely to the Goldfields, although the advantages to be gained by their construction are not only not exclusive to the Goldfields, but very unequally divided between them and Nelson proper. In fact, it' it were a question simply of developing the district of the Upper Buller, a road from the Inangahua Nelson ward, by the Lyell and the Newton, would be the proper project, and the cost might then be with greater fairness made a charge upon the income derivable from Goldiields sources of revenue. The objections which apply to this imposition upon the Goldfields revenue of the cost of roads already made or in course of construction can be made with even greater force against the recognition of this proposed tramway as a great Provincial work. Accepting the Mails own version of it, the necessity for such a work arises less from the secluded position of the population at the Lyell and the Inangahua than from the impoverished and almost insolvent condition of the city of Nelson. It is, iv short, more a city question than a Provincial one, and that is a phase of any projecc which the Government may initiate that ought to be well oousidered by the public. Let Nelson city enjoy its tramway, cheap railway or whatever it may be, but let it For continuation of news see fourth page.

be remembered that it is a Nelsonian much more than it is a West Coßsfc necessity. The necessity of the West Coast, apd the means of meeting it, lie in a very different direction, and the latter was very plainly pointed out in a recent speech by the Superintendent of Canterbury, Mr. Eolleston . He was taking part, a few days ago, in the celebration of the opening of the North Canterbury railway as far as Rangiora, and he with reason and propriety congratulated the inhabitants of that district upon the advantages certain to accrue to them from the completion of a . work which the speakers who followed him attributed to the spirited action of Mr. Moorhouse, Mr. Reeves, and the present Ministry. But Mr. Rolleston referred, as a special reason for congratulation, to' the fact that that line waß a link in the chain of communication which he hoped to see in a few years completed, by way of the Atnuri and Ahaura, as far as the -West Coast. He spoke of such a consummation as being one of the. objects to be devoutly wished for and energetically promoted in the interests of the whole Middle Island, and, considering the intimate and extensive business relationships sabsisting between the East and West Coasts, the wonder is that a railway uniting the two sea-boards was not among the first projects provided for by the Public Works Act. Compared with a continuation of the Foxhill railway, sach as is now; advocated, it is a project in which the Western Goldfields have a hundred-fold greater interest.