Tuapeka Times. AND GOLDFIELDS REPORTER & ADVERTISER SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1873.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 310, 6 December 1873, Page 2

Tuapeka Times. AND GOLDFIELDS REPORTER & ADVERTISER SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1873.

"MEASURES. NOT MEN." What will be the effect of theDiinetlin and Lawrence Railway with reference to the latter place 1 So far as concerns the railway, there is no practical benefit derivable from a consideration oji thisquestiou. The Government will not prevent ita construe' tion, should prevention be asked. So far as concerns property owners in Tuapeka, this note of interrogation has How even a practical interest. In order to answer this question in a manner not misleading we must take a bird's-eye view of it — that ia to say, we must tiry to forget that we have property in Tuapeka, and in referring to property, we include therein any interest, whether it be real estate or an interest of an apparently temporary character. Will the railway reduce'our' business ? We answer "No." It cannot. Communication cannot reduce •the gold in the Spur by so much as the oi «a cxsaxl-. Directly

communication cannot add one grain of gold to our subterranean deposits ; but, indirectly, it can even increase our gold, by increasing our facilities for obtaining gold. We must in this discussion always bear in mind.tho words •' directly ""£&& "indirectly 4 Will not customers purchase'their stores in Dunedin when the 'fail will take them there and back in a day? Very few persons, if any, could combine railway travelling with business in Dunedin in one day. Few persons would travel without their wives and a portion, perhaps, of their families. After they had bought their Dunedin stores, they would have to add thereto loss of time, railway and hotel expenses, and fare for friends. These expenses woujd be greater than the expenses incurred by a trip from one street to another in Lawrence. If the Dunedin purchases were cheaper (which is a mere supposition, and not a reasonable "one, all things considered), the Tuapeka retailers would, doubtless meet the emergency by reducing their prices and by increasing their stock, so as to suit the railway era. The railway will enable the bona fide land buyer to see his intended purchaser. The railway, although an immense help to the squatters, is neverthless the death-blow of the monopoly which would substitute sheep for population, whereby the colony is made a comparative desert for the purpose of making the homes of absentee settlera a perfect, paradise in England, and this is done literally at our expense. A railway breeds content in right-minded people. In wrong-minded people it will breed discontent ; but wrong-minded people we do not want amongst us. The settler ambitious of having a few days expended in Dunedin can cheaply and rapidly gratify his wish. He gets his toy and, like a good child, returns more contented than ever to his " am fireside.'* A railway is an educator. It introduces the citizens to the minera and farmers. They interchange idea?, and f thh leads to free trade, and friendship, and wideinindeduess. We are apt to fancy that our own pet spot is the only Garden of Eden in the world. The effect of a railway will dispel this illusion, but it will do SO in a healthy manner. Instead of leaving our pet spot in impulsive disgust, we will borrow from other places their surplus benefits, which we will transplant to our own adopted locality. A railway- brings the distributors of merchandise in closer contact with the grower and manufacturer . This is just what we want. Did it suit us, we would all dispense with intermediate bargains and go to the fountain head of commerce ; and the nearer we go to that fountain head,-the more profit, of course, accrues on every transaction. A railway does not put any seed wheit or gold dust in the soil. Tt gives that soil a prospective value. There is aroalandan unreal vaiue. The former is present, the latter prospective. Here, iv Lawrence now, every property has two values, and the prospective colors the actual value ; and what is prospective now, will be in 187G actual value. Lmd may be valuable in itself, but, owing to the absence of means of access t might be practically worthless. On the other hand, an otherwise barren hill might be made of relative value when brought into communication with a market. ,Of course wo must get more population. Otherwise, we will have empty railway carriages. We want', a population who will bring our resources above ground, and w,ho will so, manage these resourcoSj that they will reproduce comfort, settlement, and civilisation. Kailways are not a source of population, but they arc an attraction to population.' The very popular fallacy that a place declines when a railway runs through it is easily accounted for. If the Government had built a railway between Lawrence and Dunedin when Gabriels Gully yielded its largest gold supply, vfe would never have heard of the fallacy we refer to. Every Government, the American excepted, build railways after the first flush of the gold fever and "commercial excitement has subsided. A Government gets a railway just as an old bachelor gets a wife — when the sun of commerce ia apparently about to set. Therefore, people mix up a mere coincidence with a cause. Railway construction occurring simultaneously with a less feverish commercial life is a coincidence, not a cause. Had the Lawrence Kail way been constructed in 1862, it would not have been a cause of the good times of 1862. It would merely have been coincident with them, and, reasoning by fact and analogy, the local line now being constructed ha 3no preceoental or consequential connexion with the commercial condition of Tuapeka. i railway ruins no place, and cannot ruin any place. Speedy communication is not and cannot, logically or experimentally, be a cause of even partial decay. A place goes down or- up owing to an increase or a decrease of its reproductive powers. A railway tends to increase such reproductive powers. In discii9<ing all subjects, but especially commercial ones, we must take care to separate mere coincidences from causes, for the substitution of the former for the latter is a blunder which has led often to national as well as to personal insovency.