PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1880. HARBOR RIVALRIES.

Patea Mail, 11 December 1880, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1880. HARBOR RIVALRIES.

Sueakino at tlie public dinner given to Mr Duthie this week, Mr Ballance made an interesting little speech on the competing efforts to secure the trade of this coast for particular harbors. Wanganui, ho again said, is a most improvable river* and can be mrulc one of tbo best in the colony. The Board’s funds, he says, are sufficient to do this. These being his postulates, why not make the river what it can be made by using the funds at command ? It is futile to argue against a self-evident demonstra-

tion like this. Mr Ballance has it all his own way, and ought to be in a happy frame of mind as chairman of that Harbor Board. Let him suppose, if he can, that ho were chairman of the Patea Board, and believed as strenuously (which probably he docs) in the improvableness of the Patea river ; what would be his feelings at seeing a rival Board on one side endowed with “ resources sufficient to obtain the improvements so much desired,” and a rival Board on the other side endowed with hundreds of thousands, and a taxing power to boot, for building a harbor on an exposed seashore ? How much charity and goodwill and the other benign virtues would he have to spare for those well endowed rivals on either hand ? And when he also observed, from his Patea standpoint, that each of those well endowed rivals had secured its portion of a trunk railway, and had got the line carried just as far as was safe to keep out competition from other harbors, even from a harbor whose district was drained by taking 25 per cent, of its land revenue, and power to rate land for that other harbor, what icou./d be his sensation on being asked to pray “ for them that despitefully use you ?” Would he turn the other cheek to the smiter '!

It is wasting sweetness to talk “ soft sawder” to Taranaki. The people there seized our substance in advance, and arc throwing it into the sea with a satisfaction which is all the sweeter because they know that whether the Taranaki harbor will ever be made or not, they are scraping a profit off the money, and preventing Patea from using it in a remunerative work. Tlie cynical selfishness of Taranaki, combined with the sinister influence of Auckland, is stopping the north end of the Coast Railway at a point just far enough to tap the Patea district without permitting competition from Patea or from AA r anganui. The true and only advantage of a Colonial Government is that, in theory, it redresses inccpialities, checks the tyranny of the strong over the weak, and legislates for the whole instead of a few. But the Taranaki theory of Colonial Government is that Taranaki shall have the first and the longest pull at a big purse. To Wanganui we can look without jealousy, for two reason. Wanganui has stolen nothing from us. Secondly, its competition is to be welcomed rather than feared. Commerce will find the cheapest and most direct routes, and it is pitiful folly to attempt any diversion by artificial chocks. The Patea district is rich, and worth the attention of merchants at all the colonial centres. If Wanganui can become a commercial centre for this district, let it bo so, and welcome. Bring your railways up as fast as you will, and drain the trade as much as you can. AYe want you, and you want us. Mutual trade is mutual

profit. We say the same to Taranaki. If Taranaki can .make a harbor at a remunerative cost, why shouldn’t it be made ? We say it ought not to be made by draining and taxing the Patea district. On that point there is and can be no compromise.' Make your seacoast harbor in a legitimate way, at a cost which can really be recouped out of harbor revenue ; and make it with funds obtained on the principle of share and share alike, and the support of Patea district will be as cordial as it is now otherwise. That cordiality will depend, also, on a change towards honesty in your railway policy. If politicians at Taranaki wished to do unto others as they would have others do to them, they would scorn the wretched dodgery which is now at work to grab all for Taranaki by illegitimate wire-pulling.