MR TELFORD AND COUNTS ROADS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1479, 10 September 1883, Page 2

MR TELFORD AND COUNTS ROADS.

(to the editor wairarapa daily.) I Sm-iMr Telford, in his late, letter j to your columns, is', perfectly correct, The roads of this colony have never been constructed out of taxation, but out of land revenue or loan. The question now arises whether the statement is correct which Mr Telford gives utterance to a little further on, " that if we want good roads we must pay for them"—that is, I suppose be means, by taxation. Are we sure that the limited population of this colony can construct the roads still required to be constructed, out of taxation ] I do not think we can. The principle on which the Roads and Bridges Construction Act was founded is therefore unsound ; unsound because it is applied twenty years too soon, But that Act has already broken down, Counties are now limited to apply for only £SOOO in any one year. I wonder how County Wairarapa North will get on with only £SOOO a year for all its road works 1 And Ido think it would be unjust to expect the settlers to apply for loans under the Road Board provisions; for the roads of this colony have never been constructed out of taxation pure and simple.

lam sorry t 0 say that the people of Tinui and Castlepeint must wait for their very necessary roads until the people of Canterbury- and Otago have constructed their expensive and unproductive railways, when the Government may perhaps concede to that startling cry of the colony for a:miUion and a half of momtj for road work, Mr Telford is quite correct, but it is a pity that fifteen or twenty years ago the settlers were not told that if- they wanted good roads tufty must pay for them, They would soon have .replied, as Mr Meredith rightly replies now, that the taxation is moro than we can bear. I feel the excessive taxation too, and I know that our past bad borrowing policy of thirteen years has sadly limited and checked production, I feel, too, that we in the North are paying the interest due by the South, and that there is good cause for the people of this Valley objecting to county taxation. Herein our members of Parliament should come to the fote, and insist that the people of the East Coast bo given their roads, and if not,'that the incidence of the interest upon : the colonial debt be enquired' into and 'apportioned to each Island. ' lam,ifcc, ~.. Coleman Phillips,