The Nelson Evening Mail. WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 1874.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 160, 8 July 1874, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 1874.

Mr Holloway, the representative of the English Laborers' Union, an association which comprises over 100,000 of the best of the laboring classes in the old country, has paid us a short visit, aod it was of no little importance that he should carry away with him. a favorable impression of the provinco of Nelson, but if tbe statement made by a correspondent in a letter which will be found elsewhere be correct, this does oot appear to be the case. On the contrary, he seems to have left us with the idea that we aro an apathetic, listless sort of people, who take little care for the present day and still less for the morrow. The estimate he has formed in his own mind of our Government as contrasted with the Superintendents and Executive Councils of the other provinces he has visited is not flattering to us, and it is scarcely likely that Nelson will be favorably mentioned to those whom he represents on his return to England. It may be that our Responsible Ministers have been too busily engaged in effecting savings in tbe departmental expenditure to pay any attention to the representative of 100,000 of tbe flower of England's laboring men, and that, if they had travelled about with him and devoted much time to showing him the resources of our province and impressing upon him their value, some hundred or two per annum that might have been diverted from the pockets of one or two cleiks to tbe prosecution of public works would have eluded their grasp, thereby occasioning severe loss to the province, but we are disposed to think that under the circumstances no one would have been ' found to cavil at such au oversight. The fact is that we are altogether too modest and retiring in Nelson. Wo know that we have not the extent of fertile lands of which they can boast in Otago and Canterbury, and consequently are content to remain in a state of obscurity that iB not warranted by the extent of the resources at our disposal. We have now an energetic and hard riding Executive, who can travel to CoUingwood and back overland in an incredibly short space of time, but if all their energies are to be expended upon amalgamating offices and reducing salaries, and galloping so many miles a day, we cannot expect any great results therefrom. There is such a thing as straining et a gnat while a camel is swallowed at one facile gulp. If it be true tbat Mr Holloway has been sent away with such an opinion of us as is reported by our correspondent, the camel-swallowing process has certainly been carried to an extreme, the straining at gDat-like particles being exemplified in the saving of the wages of a constable or two. Let us assure the Executive, if such assurance be needed, . that the advancement of the province is ' not to be secured by mere reductions in salaries to the extent of two or three thousand a year. The public look to their leaders for something more ! than that, and one of the things they expected was that Mr Holloway should have been treated here as well as he was in the other provinces.