PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 1880. RAILWAY VOTES.

Patea Mail, 21 August 1880, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 1880. RAILWAY VOTES.

The amount put on the estimates for the West Coast Railway is £199,000. Parliament this week has voted the money. The sum voted last year for the same work was £233,000, and £112,363 had been expended at the end of the financial year, March 31st. This left £120,637 which Parliament intended to spend in completing the line by having contracts let within the year; and we have to ask Major Atkinson why he kept that money back—why he did not spend it by getting contracts accepted for the work ? He kept back about 50 per cent, of votes in this district : did he keep hack 50 per cent, of votes in all other districts ? If not, why punish your own constituents, and then make a virtue of it in the House ? Is it a virtue to break promises ? Is it a virtue to defeat the intention of Parliament ? The most mortifying part of this virtue at other people’s expense is that the money actually expended was all at the Taranaki and Wanganui ends. Instead of getting out contracts from a middle point, where railway material could be brought in cheaply by sea, and the line could be useful as it progressed, then working in both directions to meet the ends at Normanby and at Waverley, Major Atkinson allows all the money and all the benefit to go to those unselfish saints at Taranaki, and in the other direction the benefits are carefully appropriated by M.H.R.’s in the Wanganui district. We around Patea go on singing the praises of our “ local member,” and now he leaves us to whistle for our railway. His dear friends here said, “ Do not hurry him, do not press him, and for goodness sake do not annoy him with complaints; he is doing all he can for you.” Is he ? We want to have his good deeds brought to light. Give us an opportunity—one long looked for—to trumpet forth the good things done by our local member. Where arc they, and what ? Patea district has been robbed, in this way. We had a railway reserve, a valuable estate in land. The Government took that from us as value in advance for the railway they were going to give us. They have got the land, but they have not given us the railway in return for it. And when we make an effort to get a portion of the work commenced before the vote lapses, the Treasurer wakes up and says : “ Dear me ! Patea again ; that Patea is never satisfied.” Then by a great stroke of magnanimity he gives us a bit of railway three-quarters of a mile long, and says, “ There, now! I’m the only man who could have got yon that; but I must tell you it required a great effort, a very great effort, to get that large work contracted for so late in the year !” And so we are to be satisfied with threequarters of a mile of line leading to nowhere, and of no present use. Is it really an advantage to a district to be represented by a Minister ? Some Ministers esteem it a virtue to do nothing for their own district, even boasting that the money voted by Parliament has not been expended because that Minister considers it his duty to defeat the intentions of Parliament by purposely keeping the expenditure for his own district unexpended. It comes to this. We have an eminent and able representative, but his eminence and ability are for others, not for us. As was said of the inconstant lady in the song, “ If she be not fair to me, what matters it how fair she be ?”