ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE

Patea Mail, Volume V, Issue 500, 17 March 1880, Page 2

ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE

[Wis are at all times ready to give expression to every shade of opinion, but in no case do we hold ourselves responsible for the sentiments of our correspondents.] {To the Editor of the Patea Mail.) Sir, —Lest it shoal'.! be supposed that I was exceptionally treated by the late Highway Board, as insinuated by Mr Milne, I would point out that when the Board first started it was with the expressed intention of giving each settler a cart outlet, which was just, as wo ought to help each other, and some ratepayers had, by nature, good roads which needed little or no expenditure. In my case, however, it involved a considerable outlay’, as the road had been laid off straight against the face of an almost cliff- Mr

Milne knows well that the road is now one of the worst in the district, the grade being, as I think, I in 7 or 8, and the embankment so narrow as to be dangerous. During almost the whole of their, term of.ollice, the late Board did all the work themselves, expending thereon sometimes one, and even two days a week ; and although I never approved of mystery,, yet I did not think it fair to too keenly criticise the omissions of those who spent so much time in public business. It seems, however, from Mr Bridge’s letter, that we ratepayers have ourselves made the mystery ; for if there is a balancesheet open to inspection, and if we fail to examine it, we deserve to be in ignorance'. Still the Board have no moral right to shut out the public from its discussions, as by doing so it debars the ratepayers from knowing who is for am! who against :my resolution on which a division is not taken. The late Board did not do this, yet (he members of it who sit on the present one are as much to blame as tiie new members, for without .them no resolution could bo carried. I blamed the system as much as the men who took advantage of it, and this takes the error back to those who framed the law. i give praise or blame as I think it merited, ami do not, by any means, think one man always an angel, and another always a fiend.—l am, &c., JOHN VV. KEN AH. Wuverley, 13th March, 1880.