MR. AKERSTEN ON DOCKS AND "SCREWS."

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 574, 30 October 1869, Page 2

MR. AKERSTEN ON DOCKS AND "SCREWS."

(From the Colonist.) Mr Akersten's speech at Richmond, on Friday night, contains a few points which his native acuteness should have shown him were too palpably absurd and contradictory for people to accept unchallenged, especially if memory or a blue book told something of Council proceedings. His speech embraces various errors ; one particularly. Mr Akersten's allusion to the dry dock is not fortunate for himself. While in the Council, he strove to move heaven and earth to get a £40,000 stone dock erected. He brought together a body of evidence, such as it was, in letters from various persons, and made a speech striving to show what vast good such a costly structure would do to Nelson. He unwittingly explains the cause of his eagerness now:— " The non-construction of that stone dock was a fatal thing for the port of Nelson ; its stoppage ruined me." Now Mr Akersten admits that a patent slip of £SOOO or £6OOO is sufficient for the wants of this place, and it is perfectly sufficient. It would have been simply wicked to have spent the money of the Province, as was proposed, in a work so far beyond our wants and the means at our disposal. We said so at the time, and now even Mr Akersten admits the fact. It would have been squandering money that belonged to the country districts as much as to the port. But what about the disinterested public man who told the people of Westport that he did not aim at the salary, he had a business which was quite sufficient for his wants? "The honor he did not court; he was not an ambitious man. He had adoptep the country as his own, and should like to see it get on." No doubt of it. But in plain English about the stone dock, whtch was to cost £32,000 on paper, more nearly £50,000 in reality had it gone on—how far was Mr Akersten swayed by the leasing of Adele Island and the hope of supplying the stone? Was that speculation intended for the benefit of the Province, or for the good of an unambitious patriot ? Mr Akersten says its non-construction ruined him! Its construction would have brought him wealth, no doubt; and hence, in spite of the acknowledgment that a £SOOO slip would suffice for all our real wants (a fact for which all business men of any weight vouch), Mr Akersten, in the Council last year, urged on what would have been a wicked and profligate expenditure of the Provincial funds. There is ten times stronger proof here of direct personal interest than Mr Akersten could produce of his suppositions for the non-appointment of Mr Barnicoat as Deputy-Superintendent. The idea of doiug with a " hand " less in the offices, as he phrased it, as if " head " work were nowhere, and giving the money saved to the Road Boards, was too palpable a bid for country votes, which country voters could not fail to see.

Then there is the reduction of the Superintendent's salary. Mr xlkersten now thinks that £SOO, including therein all travelling expenses, is an ample sum for the chief. How changed his opinion since the time that Mr Akersten last voted the salary of the Superintendent. In 1867 he voted £800; in IS6B, when the salary was reduced to £6OO, Mr Akersten, as a member of Council, again voted for the £BOO, declaring that "he objected to a low salary for such an officer, who should be paid well, if only to he above suspicion!" Bravo ! Mr Akersten ; the new candidate is so tremendously like Caesar's wife, so far above the possibility of suspicion, that he now unhesitatingly proposes to reduce the £BOO he then held necessary, to £4OO, —practiclly £-400—because travelling expenses, as he proposes to travel over the Province, would amount to something like £IOO a year. If Mr Akersten had had his way a year ago, the salary, instead of being £6OO, would have been £BOO. Charming consistency; a pretended economical bait to catch electoral gudgeons; but it is not complimentary to the electors to suppose they cannot discover the barbed hook behind Mr Akersten's oily words and promises, which do not square with his votes and acts.