PROVINCIALISM IN WELLINGTON.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4457, 2 July 1875, Page 2

PROVINCIALISM IN WELLINGTON.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES, Sir, —The reverberations of roaring Meg (you know who I mean), while denouncing imaginary railway mismanagement in this and other provinces, have of late gone forth with the virtuous fury of their indignation to the four winds of the earth, and with it they have sent the most tender appeals to every heart possessed of the milk of human kindness to condole with them in their present agonizing bereavements, caused, they say, through the wounds unprovokedly inflicted on the province by the unholy acts of the General Government. But while thus pathetically descanting on the shortcomings of the General Government, these people take good care to close their eyes to the most glaring jobbery of the provincial ring ; in fact, right or wrong, they continually hold the provincial system here up as an inimitable paragon of perfection in all its administrative departments. For instance, every intelligent settler in this province knows well that the better the condition the main arterial roads are kept in, the cheaper goods can be carted to the interior, and that the want of such roads or neglect to keep existing roads in thorough repair simply means an increase in the cost of living, a check to the progress of frontier settlement, and in fact to paralyse every channel of legitimate industry in the province. Still, in the face of all these consequences, it will be interesting to the general public to know that the Provincial Executive of Wellington have for some days back knocked off every living creature in the of stonebreakers, horses, &c., working on tlm Wellington and Masterton road, and they now Rosily, with folded arms, look through their chamber windows while the province yet under their charge is gotng'headlong«to wreck and ruin. The result of this positive perversion of public funds, for it cannot mean anything else, will of a certainty assume a serious aspect in a very short time, as carters are already organising to raise the freight of goods to the interior, and they are also sedulously searching the intricacies of the provincial web to find a loophole to escape heavy tolls, for which they get nothing in exchange. who can blame them? The roads, which had nothing of any importance done to them for the last twelve months, are now in many places nothing but a series of crab-holes with yellow clay oozing out here and there ; and, owing to the increasingly heavy traffic now in motion, I think no sensible man will consider that I am exaggerating the injury this will cause to the industry and prosperity of the province. The General Government, then, ought at once to pick up the reins just fallen from the benumbed hands of our heartless Superintendent, so that the province may not drift further into confusion through causes which are still worse than anarchy. It is, in- , deed, anything but honorable, and shows but little gratitude, to forsake an old friend in the approaching anguish of death, and it is equally so for our Superintendent, as it were to administer extreme unction to this province at a time when, if he had a spark of gratitude in him, he ought to have nourished It kindly for “ auld lang syne ” until he handed it over to physicians capable of reviving its vital functions to its full physical strength.—l am, &c., Mtjlxum in Parvo.