PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. THURSDAY, AUGUST, 12, 1880. PATEA HARBOR FUNDS.

Patea Mail, 12 August 1880, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. THURSDAY, AUGUST, 12, 1880. PATEA HARBOR FUNDS.

The Patea Harbor Board is not to have a farther loan at present. Other Harbor Boards which have been appealing to Government, this session, for financial assistance have been denied even the smallest donation, on the plea of impccuniosity. Major Atkinson receives money deputations with a sad smile, shakes his empty bag in their faces, and bows them out. The chairman of the Patea Harbor Board returned yesterday, defeated but not subdued. He had first proposed a bill for endowing the Board with land, as other Boards had been in previous years ; and on this laud the Board might raise a farther loan to continue the navigation improvements. The Government declined to sanction the principle of the bill. We need not suppose they did so on the merits of the case, but rather as a necessary policy which they must apply in present straits to all beggars alike. The bill not having this preliminary sanction (indispensable to money bills), it could not come before Parliament for consideration. Then Mr Sherwood had to fall back on the hard expedient of asking for a grant to carry on the work till—let us suppose till better times. Docs anybody think he got it? A deal of squeezing is needed to get blood out of a stone. But there is some comfort, even if it be cold comfort, in one incidental result of the

«,«.!« • i- Tl is understood that the future prospects of Patea harbor are distinctly improved. What cannot be accomplished this year may be found mnch easier at a future stage. The funds still available to the Board will complete the present contract, will pay for the new wharf, leaving perhaps £9OO for smaller works required about the harbor.