South Canterbury Times. MONDAY, AUGUST 23, 1880.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2319, 23 August 1880, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. MONDAY, AUGUST 23, 1880.

The storm of last Thursday night has served an important purpose, for it has tended to shew how much the South or Middle Island of lS T cw Zealand is dependent almost for its very existence on the North. Those who have been in the habit of deriding the Empire City of Wellington, with its narrow streets, match-box buildings, and Civil Service suobocrats, have now got the laugh turned against them. The wind that shook the telegraph posts, north of Canterbury, aud cut off communication with the northern side of Cook’s Straits has made the people of Christchurch > Dunedin, Oamaru, aud other important centres, look excessively small and ridiculous. With all our vaunted civilisation and intelligence—our schools and universities, —aud despite the fact that we live in an ago when the globe no longer us 11 at as a pancake, is reticulated with cables and telegraph wires, we arc nearly a week behind the rest of the world. For this deplorably helpless position we arc indebted partly to tbe bite gale, partly to our want of enterprise, but chiefly and directly to our dependence on tbe sister island. Of the doings of Parliament since Thursday last we are in a state of the most blissful ignorance. The author of “Wild Will Enderby” may have carried out his terrible threat of ejecting the Ministry from office, and the country may be in throes of a political crisis, and wc know nothingof the fact. The treacherous plateglass that sheds a light on the debates of members may havejcollapsed, and broken outright tha cracked talking ware beneath—Parliament, in other words, may be like Campbell’s Arcade in Dunedin, a total wreck with its chief ornaments in ruins, and yet we are unconscious of our loss, bir Win. Fox may have broken the pledge or purchased his Excellency’s stud ; Dr Wallis may have assented

to the Deceased Wife’s sister Bill, or to make our cup of mingled joy and bitterness complete Wellington may have been swallowed by an earthquake, yet here we are, helplessly oblivious of everything that concerns us.

What a genial and felicitous time for rogues and vagabonds, elopers and absconders! In these days of rapid steam communication a four da} T S start in advance of the telegraph is not to be despised. It means for the fraudulent a chance to get to the windward of justice. But this aspect of our telegraphic troubles, while had for the authorities and favorable for smart people, by no means represents our woes and disadvantages. Isolation, even fora few days, from the rest of the world is a severe blow to our commerce. To importers and others, who speculate on the fluctuations of foreign markets, the position is one of peculiar annoj'ancc. It may mean the loss of hundreds or thousands of pounds. Then again the public mind is kept in a state of morbid excitement. The Emperor of Kussia may have sold out and retired to Italy, or he may have fallen a prey to the Nihilists, and gone to a more permanent retreat; the Duke of Edinburgh may have renounced cigars, or Mr Gladstone may have buried the hatchet; Mr Parnell and the Irish tenants may have organised a testimonial to the House of Lords, or Ayoub Khan defeated at Candahar, may be on his road to the Melbourne Exhibition; yet here we arc innocent of everything that is going on beyond the vicinity of ou r tight little island. This sensation of being buried for a few days is not very agreeable, but it is very suggestive. The present is a .suitable time for considering how the inliiction can be remedied. Onr position of isolation from the rest of the world is not at all necessary. Parliamentary nows is a luxury that wo might afford to give up without much reluctance, oven supposing Mr Peter McCaughan’s project of removing- the seat of Government to Christchurch should not succeed. But though we may dispense with the political dog and monkey exhibition, the requirements of commerce demand that if possible, future bitches with our cablegrams should be avoided. A duplicate cable between Melbourne and the Bluff would place the Middle Island beyond the reach of heavy northern winds and occasional telegraphic interruptions. We throw out the hint —it may seem an expensive one —but it is of as much importance to this part of the colony as the Otago Central railway, and it will be far less costly.