The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE. SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 1891.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 2927, 18 April 1891, Page 2

The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE.

SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 1891.

Ki|ual and cxact instuje to ;ill mun, Ot whatsoever state or persuasion, religious or political.

It is an axiom that lie who attempts to, figuratively speaking, repeat the foolish antics which the man in the fable played with his ass fails to please everybody, and of necessity succeeds in proving himself as entirely without the will and decision which must be the characteristics of every man who is to successfully conduct his own business or that of other people. The Kail way Commissioners havo brought down upon themselves; the ire of the. Timaru Harbour Board. They have had tho audacity so to work the railway between that place and Lvttelton as to successfully outbid shipowners iu the carriage of goods between tho two places. The Harbour Board argues that they have no right to do this, as the people of Timaru and the neighbouring settlers have taxed themselves heavily to create an artificial harbour, and are therefore entitled to the maintenance of a rate of carriage as artificial as the harbour they have created. The general public, on the other hand, are loud in their abuse of the Commissioners if they do not succeed in securing a monopoly of the carriage between all the places where the lines are laid. The duty of Mr McKerrow and his colleagues is perfectly clear, and that is to do as the general public demand, provided they can do so without entailing loss to the department they administer. The making of artificial harbours was a private speculation on the part of those who undertook the work. They did this with their eyes open ; the railways were either contemplated or completed before they entered upon the scheme. "Further, they were warned that they were likely to lose their substance for the very reason which in the case of both Timaru and New Plymouth has now been verified, and it is only a question of the Commissioners taking the same course in the conduel; of the business hoUveen Hawked Hay and Wellington for the Napier people i,> huse the same cause for cemphiini as their compeers. .It is matter ;'nr regret that one public work should clash with another, whore this is tho case it is clear evidence that the tnonoy spent on one of them has been in some degree wasted. The "Wellington Post commented on tho protest o£ tin? Harbour ljor.nl very much on the same linos that wo have taken above. Tho Napier Telogragh, the editor of which was one of tho strongest supporters of tho Hrnvke's P>ay scheme, has tried tho cap and found it. a fairly good fit for L,in cr-ninr. :.ii(l Lsc ii. ccl-

.sequence taken time by tlio forelock anil ontored the arena in dofenco of artificial hurbours genorally. This is what he say.n on tho matter :— "The policy of tho Post, as it is of the inhabitauts of Wellington, is to recogniso only the four principal ports. All tho rest are interlopers and impudent meddlers with tho designs of Providence. Although the theory o£ tho Post is sound enough as far as its principle goes, it is well enough known that in practice lanrl carriage cannot compete with water carriage and bo made to pay. It will be quite a new foaturo in railway management if tho Commissioners can reverse tho experience of all other countries and so we do not fear for tho future of Napier any more than we do for that of Timaru." For our part, wo should be sorry to bo so rude as to term tho instigators of artificial harbours impudent, but wo certainly must take tho libery of attributing imprudence to them, and wo may go a little further, and state that the people who voted for and agreed to bear tho cost of interference with the " designs of Providence " have been very much the dupes of those who were immediately interested in keeping the trade in the port where their vested interosts lay. Their victims were peculiarly liable to deception, owing to their petty, though in a limited sense laudable, patriotism, to their own division of the colony. We accept the fact that carriage by land is more costly than by water, but the writer in the Telegraph has quite overlooked the fact that the existence of a harbour does not preclude the cost of land carriage to its wharves. In the case of Napier, that town is at one end of a railway system and Wellington at tho other. When once goods are on the trucks, the difference in cost of carriage for a short and a long distance is not very great. The fact must be accepted that the larger tho trade of a port the lower the dues may bo made consistent with having a margin over cost of management for investment in future improvements. The four great natural harbours in the colony are so incomparably superior to any othors, either natural or artificial, that the cost of freight and insurance of their trade must always remain lower than that of their competitors. We have not bofore us a roturn giving tlio result of the working of the Napier harbour, but it is fair to presume that so zealous an advocate of artificiality would havo produced them could they have strengthened his position- Timaru acknowledges that it is beaten; Tarauaki, we all know, cannot meet its bills, and, as wo wrote above, how Napier stauds we do not know. Tho public must not loose sight of the fact that our railways are national property, and must be worked solely in the interests of the nationality, the unreasonable protests of imprudent people notwithstanding.