The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. In the cause of Truth and Justice we strive. MONDAY, MARCH 11, 1872.

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 941, 11 March 1872, Page 2

The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. In the cause of Truth and Justice we strive. MONDAY, MARCH 11, 1872.

The continual uncertainty in which the public are kept regarding the receipt of the European mail under the present outrageously expensive system has become almost unbearable. The press from one end of the two islands to the other are loud in its condemnation of such a robbery of the public. A late " Otago Times" thus characterises these shortcomings : —The miseralle character of our mail arrangemeiti received yet another illustration last week, when the Alhambra arrived from Melbourne with the Suez news but without the Suez mails. A delay of a few hours in Hobson's "Bay would have saved a delay here of ten or twelve days. However, the powers that be think it better to have all our eggs in one basket, and to pay an immense subsidy for the San Francisco service, rather than a smaller subsidy for an equally good one by the same route, calling at Fiji instead of Auckland, and leaving the balance to subsidise the carriage of our mjails via Suez also. New Zealand therefore enjoys the distinction of preferring one expensive and irregular service to two cheap ones, one of which is regular. So long however as our commercial men are afraid, for political reasons, to .make their voices heard in this matter, j the same state of things will continue, i

Like the Hindoo fanatics, they cast themselves before the car of him whom (politically) they worship, so that if they are crushed by the wheels of the New Zealand. Juggernaut, they cannot complain.