The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR P.M. Resurrexi. SATURDAY, AUGUST 7, 1880.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3624, 7 August 1880, Page 2

The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR P.M. Resurrexi. SATURDAY, AUGUST 7, 1880.

The Minister of Public Works has deliyered bis statement, and scarcely in any respect can it be said to be satisfactory, save that it shows the retrenchment policy of the Government is being carried out. The statement commences with a reference to the Kawa Kawa Railway. The coal line has been continued. The works on the Wangarei. Kamb railway have been much delayed by the contractor cknjdnjrjOiWMAej^^ lilie~coal trade. The wharf arid sta'tßra-

buildings at Helensville on the Kaipara Waikato. railway hare been satisfactorily finished. The Auckland reclamation con* tract having fallen through, through the action of the contractor, it has been re-let to another. The tGrahamstown contract of Waikato-Thames Railway is completed, and the Shortland contract nearly, and a survey of the line has been completed from Hamilton to Te Aroha. There are 19 miles still unsurveyed. The railway from JNew Plymouth to Stratford was opened on the 19th .December. Com* modious workshops hare been erected at Wanganui, and a new railway station and wharf are to be made at Foxton. It is expected that the line between Wellington and Master ton on the Wellington-Wood-ville line will be open by September. The works on the Nelson to Greymouth line at the northern end hare,been confined to the completion of the railway connecting the city of Nelson with the port. The cnly works carried out during the year on the Canterbury Interior main line are two bridges over the Eyre and Temuka rivers. The Minister of Fublio Works deplores the fact that over a thousand mm are employed in Government works at low rates of wages. He also speaks with favour of the action of Mr Firth in removing the snags,from the Upper Thames, near Matamata, at his own cost. The expenditure upon water races does not appear to have produced the large benefits which might have been expected. The total expenditure including liabilities upon water races on goldfields up to 31st of March amounted to £441,633, of this amount £42,329 yields no return. There remains a sum of £6,666,200 to be expended in railway works, and therefore the scheme of construction will have to be greatly modified, and several important works will have to be postponed until population and settlement has largely increased. The line from Thames to Waikato is dismissed in the following few sentences:—" The question of the propriety of constructing the WaikatoThames railway has been raised by the Railway Commissioners, who have recommended that it should at present be completed only to the junction with the projected Cambridge line,' and that the Cambridge section of eleven miles should be substituted. Government intend to have the subjeht very carefully investigated, with a view to determine which .proposal will be most beneficial to the country, and will act accordingly. The vote will, therefore, be proposed in the altcrnalire." Very little hope of. the line being. continued may > be expected from the above expression of the views of tip, Government. The fact of' there being large numbers of persons idle in the South is made an excuse for having several linea constructed, and with the exception of a few sections very little is promised for the North Island.' The Minister concludes his statement as follows; —"I would say that although Government have, found it to be their imperative, duty to slack the jpeed at which public works have until lately been carried on, yet we believe

the time is not far distant when works now temporarily suspended may be resumed, and those now proposed to be curtailed completed. The resources of New Zealand are so great that for her there can be no retrogression, but it is incumbent on us to recognise that for a State, as for an individual, a steady progress, and an assured prosperity can only be maintained by obedience to the dictates of prudence."