The Westport Times. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1869.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 588, 2 December 1869, Page 2

The Westport Times. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1869.

Hokitika journalism is at present devoting its energies to the amelioration of a great local grievance. It is not a grievance of magnificent interest or extensive prevalence, but it has the merit of being essentially local and sensibly palpable. The town drains are giving forth smells. If plain words are permissible, they stink ; and, having his noso thus offended, the journalist has very properly assumed the offensive towards stinks in general, and the defensive on behalf of all measures sanitary. In Greymouth the distressing position of a local board is similarly affecting the journalist's senses and sympathies. With a very proper aversion to that legal functionary, he dreads the presence of the bailiff on the premises of the Paroa Road Board, whose members, it appears, have " got into a sad mess," and -whose very existence in bodily form " appears coming to an end, and that in a very ignominious manner " this ignominy being the absence of cither hard cash or bank credit. With these examples as subjects of newspaperial comment small in themselves, but locally as well as physically or morally interesting—the Westport journalist may well be excused if, for the nonce, he finds a grievance in grave-yards or assumes a tone of severity on the subject of a sixpenny toll. The condition of the Westport cemetry is really a fair subject for grave commeut and condemnation. Its oifnntinn was lifivr l !' select, or in the remotest degree suitable for its purpose. It was " Hobson's choice" between swamp and sea. Necessity having no law, there was no precedent to guide those who selected it but the urgency of necessity itself, and, as a temporary expedient, it may have been sufficient. But for present purposes—as accommodation for the inevitable proportion of those whom death must take from ;:mong such a population as is now set led here —it is totally inadequate. Worse than that, the land threatens to give up its dead to the sea, or, rather, the sea threatens to seize the dead from the land. Even now the grave-yard and the feelings of the friends of those whose mortal relics it contains are daily desecrated by the encroachments of the tide and the surf. Within the last twenty-four hours a junction was effected between the river and the sea by a stream of water which intruded itself within the ceinetry fence, and there appears to be every reason for apprehending that, during the next spring tides, the encroachment and its consequent desecration will be greater and more palpably and painfully felt. To prevent such a scandal —or, at the very least, such an objectionable incident—it would be well to be prepared ; and we hope that not only will the authorities select new cemetries, as they are now doing, but that they will also decide at once as to the expediency of disinterring and removing the remains which are so liable to be disinterred and removed without the intervention of man. A sufficient judgment of the probabilities of further sea encroachment can surely be formed without waiting for actual results, as happened in the case of the school-house. Imprudent haste might be forgiven. Imprudent delay would not readily be forgotten or overlooked. The other subject—the subject of removing the tolls on the Orawaiti Bridge—is a subject of similarly local character, and probably intei'ests the living more than does such a question as the safe custody of the dead. If the existence or non-existence of tolls does not touch the higher feelings, it touches an equally tender point—the pocket. And pocket questions are usually paramount. They are so when it is only the pockets of units or tens that are affected. They may reasonably be so when they affect, even in small degree, some hundreds or thousands ; and such is the case in this instance. Taxed as is every ounce of gold which is got from the Northern Terraces, and taxed .as its producers further are by the costliness of their provisions, it is undoubtedly a grievance that there should be an aggravation of taxation by the imposition of such a toll as that which has still to be paid at the Orawaiti Bridge. Not that the charge is by any means unfair, as between the bridge-builder, Mr Jones, and the public. Mr Jones rather deserves credit, as well as cash, for his enterprise. But it is not creditable

to the Government that "Westport should be approachable neither on one side nor the other without a charge upon the inhabitants or their visitors; it is discreditable that upon a population such as that by which the vast district northward is being developed, and developed? under great physical difSculties/therevshould be maintained a tax which, though petty in its amount, is annoying in its character, and, we shall .even go the length of saying, is unjust in principle. "With a due regard.to vested interests, this toll ought to be abolished ; and, if the Press and the Provincial Council have any power, we trust that it will not be long before its abolition will become an accomplished fact.