MACANDREW VERSUS NELSON.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5483, 23 October 1878, Page 3

MACANDREW VERSUS NELSON.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES. Sir, —I trust I may be allowed to express through a Wellington newspaper the indignation and disgust I have felt at the tone of aa article in the New Zealander of last Friday on “poor little Nelson.” It is a tissue of misrepresentations from beginning to end. If Nelsou is a “ spoiled child,” it is not the present Government that has “ spoiled it,” but rather “despoiled” it. Nelson does not desire to get all the plums regardless of who else may suffer. Nelson does not “seek to obtain that which it could not utilise if it possessed,” nor does it “chafe because its more vigorous neighbors are to have their public works extended to the benefit of tho whole colony,” minus Nelsou and Marlborough, of course, for how could they benefit ? Nelson wants nothing so unreasonable as all this; but if it had the chance it would soon prove itself as “ vigorous ” as its neighbors, and prove-also that its line of railway towards the West Coast, which would complete the original scheme of through communication from North to South of the Middle Island, is no more like a “ white elephant ” .than a Government literary hack is like a white dove. The statistics of this line,, carefully collected through a series of years, and lately set forth in a pamphlet by Mr. Acton Adams, of Nelson, are quite beyond refutation, and go far to show that not one of the lines for which it is proposed to take such extraordinary and such unconstitutional powers under the Railway Construction Bill would, of itself, confer more benefit upon the whole colony, to say nothing of “poor little Nelson,” than this, which would pass through a country teeming with mineral wealth, and afford scope for development undreamt of by those who have never, taken the trouble to inform themselves thereon. In this category are more than one of tho Ministry, who refuse to consider tho question upon its merits simply because the Nelson line is unfortunately not a political railway. Nelson is to be punished for all time, and the whole colony with it, because its members had not the worldly wisdom to throw up their hats when the Grey party jockied their opponents out of place. Vac victis / “ To be, or not to be, —that is the question.” Nelson objects that the scheme of through communication will not be complete without her line, to the manifest injury of the whole colony ; she objects to be called upon to contribute towards the cost of other railways from which she can iu no sense reap any benefit ; she objects to a gross breach of faith on the part of the present Government, inasmuch as she gave up the further prosecution of her line when its construction was well assured, at the request of a former Government, who then made it an integral portion of the Public Works scheme ; she alleges (as is well known) that there are no engineering difficulties whatever in tho way of its construction, that its non-construction would ruin her prospeels and divert thoHrade which is naturally hers, and has been hers hitherto, to Canterbury and Otago ; and she asks that her line should bo carried ou parri passu with the other lines, so that she may have a fair chance witluher richer neighbors who are scheming to blot her out of existence as a commercial centre* These are not high grounds upon which the ■ people of Nelson and Marlborough have invited their members to oppose the Railway Construction, bat, at any rate, there is no “miserable selfishness” about them, as the New Zealander puts it. They are not, however, the grounds which will move, it is to be hoped, a majority of the House to reject a Bill that should rather be called the Destruction Bill, for it aims directly at destroying the power of tho House for five years to control tho ‘expenditure of a vast sum of borrowed money by annual appropriations. If this “ useful measure ” (?) which is also specially intended to effect the ruin of the propects of thousands of people innocent of offence against the Government, is what the New Zealander means by “ legislation of a character truly colonial,” then save ns from such legislation. If “ a cause that lacks assistance, and a wrong that needs resistance,” is to be stamped out by trickery, insult, falsehood, treachery, injustice, aud vindictiveness, then let me say that the cry in future will be, not that the Assembly is “deteriorating,” as the New Zealander allows, but that it has sunk to a level of degradation aud servile abasement that has never yet been reached by any colonial Legislature.—l am, &c., A Nelsonian in Wellington. October 21.