New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, JUNE 19, 1874.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4133, 19 June 1874, Page 2

New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, JUNE 19, 1874.

Ox the 28th of May the Premier of Now South Wales submitted, to the Legislative Assembly of that Colony a resolution approving of the engagement entered into with this Colony, and the contract concluded with Mr. Hall for the San Francisco mail service, the advantages of which we have now begun to enjoy. The debate was a somewhat singular one, but there is no question as to the result which was arrived at. After various divisions on questions of postponement, and on an amendment that the course which the Government had taken with reference to the contract should not bo “approved of ” but simply “assented to,” —the last of these amendments being rejected by the votes of 27 to 5, —the resolution proposed by Mr. Parkes was agreed to. This is all in which New Zealand is interested as to the debate ; but it is impossible to refrain from expressing sympathy with Mr. Parkes in the extraordinary position in which he found himself placed in doing his duty most honestly, sincerely, and intelligently to the Colony which he represents, in ona of the most important matters with which the Ministry of New South Wales have lately had to deal. It was impossible to deny that Mr. Parkes had made an excellent bargain for New South Wales, and that in the position of semi-antagonism towards Victoria into which lie had been forced, ho had accomplished more than could have been anticipated towards maintaining for New South Wales the premier position among Australian colonies her people are so resolute in maintaining for her. It could not be denied that all through the negotiations, which began in 1872, for a tenknot service, to the completion of the agreement with Mr. Hall in 3873 for a twelve-knot service, Mr. Parkes acted most discreetly. The tenders originally sent in were of the most opposite character. Mr. Hall—who had previous experience of such a service, and had lost not a little money when he endeavored to do the work with vessels chartered from the Australian Steam Navigation Company—offered to provide such a service as the Government of New South Wales required for a subsidy of £41,000. The A.S.N. Company asked something over £70,000 for the same work. There were two other offerors ; an English firm, whom we take to be Gladstone, Robertson, and Co., were ready to perform the service for £4OOO per voyage, or £44,000 per annum, while General Burnside, an American, was ready to do it for £40,000. But Mr. Parkes had previous experience of American contractors. Mr. Hall had done his work fairly enough, and if he had not done all that was expected of him, the fault was more that of the Assembly of New South Wales which, after promising a subsidy, failed to pay it. The promise may have been kept literally to the legal understanding ; but it was broken, nevertheless, to the honorable hope. He was succeeded by another American contractor, Mr. Webb, whose promises also were very large ; who did his best, no doubt, with his peculiar class of steamers to fulfil his contract, but of whom we in this Colony had quite enough. We have no wish to say more as regards Commodore Webb than that ho honestly desired to perform all he undertook to do ; but the logrolling ho depended upon in Congress, to secure to him and his friends a handsome subsidy, entirely failed, and the Colonics in consequence did not receive the service for which they had paid. Mr. Parkes probably remembered this, and when General Burnside —the army this time, not the navy—tendered for the service, at a few'"thousand pounds less than Mr. Hall, Mr. Parkes no doubt recalled some of his past experiences by way of caution. Commodore Webb was certain of a largo subsidy from the American Government ; so was General Burnside. Commodore Webb had groat inilnonce with Araeri.can railway authorities, and over the Atlantic steam trade ; so had General Burnside. But the Commodore failed to obtain the sympathy he expected to find in San Francisco, and the support ho anticipated obtaining in Washington, and the result was a break-down. Mr. Parkes must have entertained just the least suspicion that General Burnside—and in America military titles are won very cheaply—may have been as unsoundly sanguine of obtaining a subsidy of £20,000 or £25,000 per annum as the Commodore was ; and ho was probably wise in arriving at the conclusion that the day was past, oven in America, when any one individual could command the transAmcrican rails, and when the influence of a director of one of the Atlantic Steam Shipping Companies could ensure earlier

transit for mails which any one of half-a-dozen companies, equally powerful and sailing their ships as frequently, would only be too glad to carry. The debate in the Assembly ®f New South Wales, in fact, is only ridiculously suggestive of the smallness which Colonial ideas have a tendency to assume when they are not sharpened up by contact with aenter minds in wider scenes. It was occasionally personal to a humiliating degree. It was chiefly prompted, appaX’ently, in the interests of the A.S.N. Company, although they had retired from the scene when their ridiculously high tender was rejected. Mr. Parkos was charged with having given a preference to Mr. Hall, because when he (the present Premier of New South Wales) was in difficulties some years ago he had been employed by Mr. Hall to endeavor to engage the other Colonies in a joint effort to establish a mail service via California. The answer was easy, simple, and honorable; “At that time I wanted employment—and I took it.” But Mr. Parkes was able to add:—“ln that relation, I found Mr. Hall so honorable, that I saw (reason to have more faith in him than I had before.” Then came another charge that the Government had granted the use of a dock for' the mail steamships, on too easy terms, to Mr. Hall’s fleet; the answer was, that the only private dock in Sydney was too small to receive the ships of the new lino. Mr. Parkes’s replies to his tormentors were complete, so far as the real business before the Assembly was concerned. He proved that the arrangement he had entered into in connection with the New Zealand Government was an economical one; ho showed that the vessels engaged in the temporary service had exceeded in speed anything that had over before been accomplished in the establishment of a new lino ; ho compelled the Assembly to admit that wlicn the responsibility of Mr. Hall’s first securities was called in question, and only forty-eight hours were given him to complete or abandon his contract, he had submitted names of even higher standing in the commercial world than those, good as they undoubtedly were, which were first accepted; and ho climaxed his answer to the supporters of the American tenderer by stating that the references which had been given by General Burnside wore not so satisfactory as could have been desired. The personalities of the debate we pass over. It was conducted in a spirit not particularly creditable to some hon. gentlemen who seem to have inherited the nature of that one among the original settlers who took credit for the fact that he and others had “ left their country for their country’s good.” We need not, however, dwell upon the eccentricities of a member who could boast that he “ never went home as a lecturer at the expense of the Government;” that he “never cheated a number of friends who lent him money ;” who was satisfied that “if hon. members did not like what lie had to say, let them move that his words bo taken downwho could not be persuaded to understand a plain ruling of the Speaker, that if he spoke he spoke to the question, and if —as he asserted — he did not wish to speak to the main question, he must sit down. These, perhaps, are the eccentricities, the little pleasantries, of a New South Wales Parliament. While we sympathise with Mr. Parkes, that in performance of an obvious and most important duty to the Colony of which he is Premier he has been exposed to so much dirt-throw-ing, we congratulate him on being so entirely successful in obtaining Parliamentary sanction to tho agreement entered into with this Colony, from which, both New South Wales and Now Zealand are likely to reap substantial advantages.