THE VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume II, Issue 206, 19 September 1874, Page 2

THE VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT.

TO THE EDITOR. Str, —This movement seems to he a game jjretty well played out, and now appears only of use to the officers receiving pay, and as they are more ornamental than useful, why truly they had better be dispensed with.— Although Captain Brett in the House of Representatives was rather hard upon the Volunteers as a body, there was much truth in his statements and remarks ; and if the accounts which we read in the newspapers are correct, —and I see no need to doubt them—some officers, appear to use the funds in some mysterious way not explained. It appears at all events easier to get them into tin ir pockets than to get them out again. The mm who apply for their capitation money feel t his keenly. Above £30,000 may well be saved by abolising this useless piece of machinery. Why should paid officers be required for the Volunteers when we call upon unpaid Justices of the peace to perform Magisterial duties, and unpaid Chairmen and Trustees of Highway Boards to perform tolerably heavy and onerous duties ? As economy is the order of the day, every £lOO saved must, be looked to, and this is perhaps the most useless expenditure in our Financial •Statement.—l am, tc., Economist. .

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Tn your position as the People’s Advocate, permit one of your protegees to ask, by what, test are the J. P.’s of Auckland and the Thames Goldfield Warden, selected? as the Auckland newspapers, if we except the Star, decide that surface respectability is quite a guarantee for efficiency; while the people (no doubt in their simplicity) consider that those aspirants for Magisterial dignify should practice a small sprinkling of integrity and honor in their close commercial transactions. Farther: they |ohject to Magistrates’ private consultations especially in cases where I heir own conduct is doubtful and their characters suspended on a tender thread.— 1 am, &c., Earnest.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In these days when John Company is all the go, and when Alut.ua! Improvident, Clubs are quite the thing; when you see flourished in pleasing advertisements that you arc requested to become a member of any or all of at. least, a dozen local Clubs of one sort or another of equally attractive pretensions whether as to profit, or pleasure ; when such is our love for each other’s society in some shape and at any time, that upon the slightest provocation and more often without, any provocation at all, we call a meeting, pass resolutions forming ourselves into a Club, and send round the inevitable hat for subscriptions. When in short the desire is strong upon us to do something no matter exactly what, in company with no matter exactly whom, no matter al what expense ; it is surprising that we have not got up a Steam Boat Club to carry goods up the Waipaoa to Ormond and for that matter further. The idea is good and the scheme would pay. We are without roads and are likely to remain so. The presence of a Road Board. and the entire absence of roads is now quite a recognised condition of things, and alihnush we really cannot be said to like it still there appears no other co'urse open, and in spite of the valuable efforts of the Chairman of that popular institution to effect, some sort of arrangement with the General Government, to assist, us, we are not as a community sanguine as to lhe success of those efforts. In the meantime and pending this road question being finally settled this district is progressing backwards, for it is quite as safe and not so expensive to send for goods right away to England as to send to Gisborne.

From some years residence on the banks of the Waipana—l take (he liberty of saying that it is far more navigable than the Waikato and that, by the removal of a few snags from three to six and from six to twenty feet of water may be got- during eight, months (at least) of the year. Say from Alarch to December. A

boat of a proper build will of course be required, the exact details of which can be procured from those who understand such matters.

With such a magnificent natural highway running straight from the Bay some fifteen miles through the heart, of the district, requiring only a very moderate and most profitable investment of money to be made use of, why waste our hard-earned wages upon trying to make out of nothing an almost impossible road ? Better make ropes of sand and roll the stone of Sycephees, for that sort of work at any rate can be done for nothing, with about equal profit as our road works are carried on. The Road Board as an attempt to administer local funds has so far proved a deplorable failure and we expect the same result in the future. There is just enough of money got out of the people to find the semblance of employment for one or two people with one or two more at respectable salaries to look on by this Road Board system, and although I expect (D.V.) to live for another fifty years or so iq the ordinary course of nature, I certainly do not in the ordinary course of Public Works as carried on in these parts, expect to live long enough to see the main road finished. Let us then, (Mi my suffering brethren, join in buying a steam boat—say the Luna, she is not fit for anything but. river work and hardly respectable enough for us having been used in carting a good deal on “ National Institutions ” about lately, and rather dirty in consequence, but Still, she might be put to rights some how, and get a decent living yet. It is no use hoping against hope for any assistance in road-making from a tax extracting and devouring Government, for when there is no longer any water iii the Waipaoa river I think we may safely conclude Io t ry the road, and place faith in the promises of the Premier, but not before.—l am, &c., O. L. W. Bousfield.