TARANAKI ON THE HARBOR REPORT.

Patea Mail, 18 August 1881, Page 4

TARANAKI ON THE HARBOR REPORT.

The Taranaki Herald says—“ We hardly think the House will be prepared to endorse the recommendations of the committee appointed to ‘ inquire into the financial position of the .Now Plymouth harbor works’; not only because the report will be found contrary to evidence and facts, but because the stopping of public works approved of and ordcrek by Parliament, and the confiscation of endowments is a dangerous precedent to introduce, and may be made to affect other parts of the colony when once it is commenced. The report, it must bo acknowledged, has been very skilfully drawn up, but, like all documents when party vindictiveness instigates their composition, too much is tried to be proved, hence it fails to serve the purpose for which it is intended,” In stating that “ the funds of Board would only suffice lo carry the work to a point which wonld secure a depth of eleven or twelve feet at low-water spring tides, the committee must have been taking the evidence of witnesses who knew nothing about the matter, and rejected what they were told by those best informed. Not d word is said about the revenue the Harbor Board is likely to derive from its reserves, which will, in a few years, be something considerable, while the estimated expenditure on the works is placed at an outside fignre.” Among other things not shown by the Inquiry Committee is how the colony will be more benefitted by stopping the work than by letting it go on. To the statement in the report that “ the evidence disproves the supposition that the proposed works would be of special value to the colony as a harbor of refuge,” the Herald says “ Now the class of vessels afloat in our colonial waters which require shelter in stormy weather is largely composed of small schooners trading between Lyttelton *ud the other grain ports in the South and West Coasts. The draught of these schooners seldom exceeds eight feet, and, as the report admits, that, for the money in hand, the breakwater can be carried out as far as twelve feet at low-water spring tides, shelter is here afforded for the class of vessels predominating in our waters and which require a place of refuge to run to owing to their not provisioning for any long passage. It was only last week that the schooner Telegraph, bound for Waitara ran out of provisions, and the crew were (or three days off that liver without water, owing to there being no place on this coast where the captain could run into for shelter, and be able to replenish his stores. Had the breakwater been built the crew wonld not have suffered the privations they had to encounter, and would have escaped the danger of foundering. The wreck chart will show clearer than anything we can write the .advantages which a breakwater at the Sugar Loaves, will afford vessels trading on this coast, and we contend that on the score of humanity alone that the Honse is bound to allow the work to be proceeded with.”