The Patea Mail. Established 1875. MONDAY, JULY 30, 1883. SOME CORRESPONDENCE.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1066, 30 July 1883, Page 2

The Patea Mail. Established 1875. MONDAY, JULY 30, 1883. SOME CORRESPONDENCE.

The comnumicatious received at newspaper office fiom correspondents are 'as varied as they are numerous. Sometimes it is a letter in the form of a pungent criticism upon the faults of omission and commission of some public man. Another will be a valuable'contribution upon the establishment of industries, or a like subject. Then there are the letters upon public and private grievances, the latter generally being unsigned and forwarded in the hope of administering a stab in the dark to an adversary by way of revenge for some real or fancied wrong. We have received several such, and of course they went into the waste-paper basket. We even had a letter the other day containing about half a column of (l Society ” gossip, rubbish which nobody but a born idiot would write, still less expect us to publish. This precious stuff came anonymously, but we waited patiently until we discovered the writer. We advise him, in a friendly way, to leave that sort of work alone. The publication of this so-called “ Society ” news has wrought anguish in many a happy home elsewhere, and we want none of it here. Bat wo have wandered off from our purpose which was to draw attention to a little paper forwarded by some friend at Manaia. It came by post without a request of any kind, and we are therefore somewhat at a loss to know what is required of us. Wo suppose it was intended for publication, possibly for the purpose of comparing Patea in 1870 with Patea in 1883. "Here it is Taranaki Provincial CounciJ : Session XIX., 1870—Return of the estimated revenue and expenditure at Patea for the year, 1870-1

Kevenue—Licenses, £BO Os Od Expenditure —Ferryman’s house, £3O; Ferryman, £52 ; services of agent, £l2 12s Od ; total, £94 12s Od.” Times have changed since this return was laid before the Taranaki Provincial Council. That august body has passed into oblivion, but Patea remains a sturdy monument of progress and enterprise. Wo have bad our ups and downs like other places, but when things have righted themselves it has generally been that we have had more of the first than the last. Let us hope that it will continue so, and that in another ten or twelve years onr progress will be such that we shall be able to look back upon 1888 in much the same light as we now do at Patea in 1870, and that the relative position of the town will be the same.