IS IT POSSIBLE TO PLEASE EVERYBODY?

New Zealand Mail, Issue 17, 20 May 1871, Page 1

IS IT POSSIBLE TO PLEASE EVERYBODY?

One of the happiest cartoons we have seen brought out in the colony, appeared about two years ago in the Dunedin “ Punch.” It represented a railway train running in tortuous sinuosities up and down the Tokomairiro plain, and passing every settler’s door ! This was the railway line that was “ to please everybody.” The engineer believing with Legendre that a straight line is the shortest distance between auy two points has, however, made his line enter the plain at the one end and proceed straight through to the best debouch at the other. Some properties receive more benefit than others, and why ? Simply because the interest of the whole province does not conflict with theirs. There are many conditions which require to be fulfilled to constitute a good line, and that line which combines the most advantages with the fewest disadvantages is, or at least should be, adopted. Whatever line is chosen must run through some property, which will be either the better or the worse for it, as the case may be. But because it gives this special advantage

or disadvantage to some properties, any objections from the neighboring proprietors on this score are preposterous and childish.

In the new era on which, under the present administration, the colony has entered, the same selfishness ascribed to the Tokomairiro settlers will doubtless be predicated of every district through which a railway is to be constructed, or in which a bridge is to be built. It is very natural to wish one’s property to be improved, and it is hard for those who, acquiring property perhaps at a relatively greater price, as lying near an existing road or bridge, see another road- line adopted or the bridge removed to another site. Their property will be depreciated, but still they have no right to complain. The greatest good of the greatest number, is the only principle that can be recognised. Suppose,, for instance, that our Provincial Executive were, in the case of the Hutt Bridge, to defer to the wishes of the proprietors or residents in its immediate neighborhood, and, against the recommendation of Mr Blackett, put up the bridge in its present site, they would be doing the province and the colony a grievous wrong. Suppose, again, that the Engineer recommends a line of railway that would be distant from existing townships, but would, among other special advantages, be more useful in ultimately promoting settlement, the General Government would be sacrificing the interest of the public to that of an interested few if they failed to adopt it. We do not believe that either the present, or any future Provincial or General Government, would act so basely. The very supposition is insulting. To object thenfi) a road or railway line, the position of a bridge, or any other public work, on any other ground than that of the public interest is as absurd as it is unjust.

We have been led into these remarks, by observing that; in a contemporary (never noted for taking a broad and public-spirited view of anything) a miserable attempt is made to stir up strife by pandering to local jealousies, and urging the settlers of Rangitikei to vindicate their rights as against those of the favored township of Marton. We (the writer of these lines) have never seen either place ; but this we fearlessly assert, that if the public interest demands that the line should go through Rangitikei, and that through private interests it should be attempted to divert it to Marton, that would be a grievous wrong and foul injustice, which we will do our very utmost to prevent. We noticed elsewhere lately something like an insinuation that the Wairarapa railway line was suspiciously near Mr Bunny’s property. We consider these inuendoes are simply abominable. If the interest of Mr Bunny is consulted, instead of that of the public, we say he is unworthy of his public position, and we shall do our utmost to expose not only him, but all who, with him, are conspirators against the public interest. No greater perfidy can be committed than this, unless, indeed, we except that of unjustly insinuating that any one has been a party to it. Such inuendoes will, if persisted in, destroy all faith in the honor of Mr Blackett, of all our public men, and of our fellow colonists at large. If the Hutt bridge, or any of the railway lines, are not constructed where the engineer-in-chief recommends them, then the colony will prove untrue to the first principles of colonisation, by sacrificing to an interested few the interests of all succeeding generations. As we have most emphatically declared, by adopting the principle of borrowing, that it is unjust to lay on the present generation the burden of improvements which will enhance the estate of the generations to come after us ; so we would perpetrate a greater injustice on posterity if in selecting lines for roads and railways, and sites for bridges and public works, we had regard only to the interests of our present settlers.