LOCAL RATING FOR RAILWAYS.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 882, 2 November 1871, Page 3

LOCAL RATING FOR RAILWAYS.

(" Nelson Examiner," October 14.) With the strongest desire to find that the Government and Legislature are establishing substantial guarantees of moderation and sobriety in the conduct of their schemes of public works, we are, sc far, unable to satisfy our minds that anything has been or is likely to be done. The " Board " has become, in the hands of Messrs Vogel and G-'isborne, the mere shadow of a name—solid only in the prospect of a draft on the Treasury to pay salaries to six more politicians. The local rating, on which we looked with hope upen its first announcement, will not, We fear, bear examination. Mr Gisborne's statement, as Minister of Public Works, gives no business-like hint of the mode of its application. The expression in which he makes a passing allu°ion to the subject, runs, that in order to meet any deficiency of interest earned by railways, " if necessary a special rate shall be levied upon the persons in their vicinity benefited by their construction." The italics are our own, and what this personal rate can possibly mean we are quite at a loss to conceive. A rate on persons benefited by a railway is legitimate enough, but bow such a thing is to be ascertained and levied otherwise than in the shape of fares and freights for the use of the lines, we wait to learn from the bill embodying the rating power, which will perhaps reach Iselson some few weeks after it has become law. In the meantime we are most unwilling to forego or to disparage anything that offers a hope of protection against log rolling and scrambling for the expenditure of the public means, irrespective of commercial prudence and the interests of the general public, and shall be sincerely glad if the difficulties we are about to state should have been overcome by legislation. To give effect to rating as a protection of the kind referred to, it is necessary, first, that those who are to bear the burden should be consulted before it is imposed ; cind, secondly, that the rating should be proportionate not to the value of the benefit conferred, but to the outlay at which it is ob-

tained and maintained. As to the first point it is pretty certain that sooner or later, in the event of the burden of localratesbecomingconsiderable, the localities, unless consulted beforehand, will made the most of the fact that the benefit has been thrust upon them, and as in the case of the local charging of the cost of military roads in tbe North Island, they will combine, and, with a good show of justice on their side, will obtain relief at the expense of the whole colony. It can hardly be deemed a duty of a district, to make railways at its own expense for the general accommodation. The necessity of public roads, has indeed been held to impose such a local duty in respect to them ; but roads are required in the interests of order, and are an adjunct of effective police. Railways, on the other hand, put it how we will, are a luxury sucb as a small local division of the community ought not, except with its own express consent, to be required to furnish and maintain out of its own resources. The general principle, that local rates are to be levied by local action, ought to apply in this case. It is because the presumption must be, that the prospects of an enterprise are good, if the ratepayers once for all desire to undertake the burden, and guarantee the cost; and because, if they refuse, the presumption is equally figainst it, that fair play and the effective, working of this rating system as a check upon rash enterprises both require that the voice of the ratepayer shonld be heard. The votes of two or three members of the Assembly, perhaps personally interested, are no satisfactory teat of the propriety of so hateful a mode of taxing us us that by special rate imposed from without; and in practice, the bulk of the Legislature will bo passive in any separate case, which will almost alway depend on the local members.

CHILD MURDER AND SUICIDE OF A LADY NEAR LEOMINSTER. An inquest was held at Kinsland (four miles from Leominster), on Tuesday, respecting tlie death of Miss Fanny Goss, who committed suicide at the Rectory, on Saturday last, under circumstances briefly reported in the " Post" of Monday. The deceased young lady, who was thirty-three years of age, is a sister of the Rector. It will be remembered that on the 11th instant, the dead body of a full grown infant was found by the gardener in a drain connected with a water closet at the Rectory, that an inquest on the body of the child was opened and adjourned until the 28th instant, and that on Saturday, under a precept from the Coroner, two medical gentlemen attended at the Rectory to make an examination of the female members of the household, in order to ascertain if any of them had given birth to a child. Miss Goss strongly resented this, and locked herself in her bed room. She exhibited great distress of mind, and declined even to see the doctors until the return of her brother from Hereford, While these gentlemen were waiting in the garden they were alarmed at Miss Goss's frantic cries, and gained access to her through her brother's bed room. They then found her dead Upon the bed. With one of her brother's razors she had made four such frightful gashes in her arm, that in one instance she had severed the whole of the muscles. After inflicting these dreadful wounds she held her arm over a basin, which contained the enormous quantity of ninety ounces of blood. A. post mortem examination left no doubt that it was the unfortunate deceased who had given birth to the child foUnd in the drain. The Jury returned an open verdict in respect of the child. " and that Miss Goss committed suicide while labouring under temporary insanity." They absolved the Rector from any knowledge that his sister had given birth to the child, and desired to sympathise with him in bis great distress. —" Birmingham Post" Aug. 28.