The Lyttelton Times. SATURDAY, MAY 30, 1863.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1101, 30 May 1863, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. SATURDAY, MAY 30, 1863.

The story of the detention of our English mail at Melbourne deserves to be told. It is quite refreshing to get a passing glimpse of the manner in which our postal service is conducted by those to whom it has been entrusted. "We are indebted to the ' Otago Daily Times ' for extracts from the letters of Messrs. M'Meckan, Blackwood and Co., the mail contractors, and of Messrs. Nicholson and Co., the owners of the City of Hobart, on this subject. And we are further in" debted for an opinion expressed by the ' Daily Times' to the effect that the only persons to blame are the members of the late Provincial Executive of Otago! But to begin at the beginning. It appears that the Northam, with the English mails on board, reached Melbourne a few hours after the Aldinga had sailed for Dunedin. Owing to some irregularity of the Adelaide steamer, no telegraphic message had been forwarded to Melbourne, giving notice of the arrival of the Northam at the Sound. But fortunately, as it seemed to those interested in New Zealand, the City of Hobart was about to sail for Dunedin. Unfortunately for us, among those interested in New Zealand must not be reckoned the mail contractors. The owners of the City of Hobart offered Messrs. M'Meckan and Blackwood to bring on the mail for £850. They were referred to the Post-office authorities, who offered £200 on behalf of the Ota»o O Government. It appears that once before the City of Hobart brought down a mail in hopes that the Otago Government would pay for the service ; this payment was not made because Messrs. M'Meckan and Blackwood protested against it, and made a claim for themselves on the ground that they had performed their service according to contract. Under these circumstances, Messrs. Nicholson in the present instance asked for £150 from Messrs. M'Meckan and Blackwood, besides the £200 offered (but not guaranteed) on behalf of the Otago Government. On this demand Messrs. M'Meckan and Blackwood, our mail contractors, write to their agents at Dunedin—" Nicholson has had an offer of £200 from the Post-office; he declines to take the mails unless we also give him £150. We respectfully declined to pay anything. "Why should we ? "We kept the Aldinga full time, and will send another steamer as soon as we can" Is not this touchingly naive ? " "Why should we ?" when we are dealing with a simple-minded Government and people in New Zealand, who don't care what they pay, or how little they get for their money. " Why should we ?"

As for Messrs. Nicholson, we have no contract with them, and so we have no equal ground of complaint. But we may be allowed to say that we trust our Government will not make a contract with them. Here is their explanation, forwarded to their agents by the City of Hobart, on its sailing without the mail:— " The English mail we regret to say we are unable to get. The Postmaster only offers £200 for the service, and that without guarantee of payment from your Government ; and having once carried the mail on such terms and got nothing for the service, we object to the terms being offered a second time. "We offered to take the mail if M'Meckan, Blackwood and Co. would subsidise the amount offered by the Government

by £150; but they declined paying anything out of their subsidy." And so the mails were deliberately left behind. What signifies it to us whether Messrs. Nicholson and Co. had a grudge against or mistrusted the Otago Government or the mail contractors ? We decline to enquire further into the causes of this feud.— " Why should we ?" All we know is that this is not the first time New Zealand has had good reason to regret the Aldinga contract. As far as the early delivery of the mails is concerned, we should have been better off if there had been no contract and no contractors. The Post-office authorities would then have put the mail on board the first steamer coming down.

The New Zealand colonists may learn, if they chose, two or three lessons by this misadventure. In the first place, it is evident that Melbourne ship owners do not think it worth their while to show common civility to this colony. We have long known that the Aldinga contract lias proved an unfortunate one for us, but we certainly did not fancy that the important interests involved in the delivery of the whole mail for the Southern Provinces would be sacrificed by the mail contractors on account of a squabble with another firm as to who was to pay or guarantee £150. Possibly Messrs. M'Meckan and Blackwood have plenty of work for their steamer without the contract. They might have given us a hint to that effect in a more civil manner. But our Government want a broad hint and they have got it. Let us be thankful for what comfort we can extract from our misfortune. We cannot but think ourselves that the contractors will by-and-bye look back with regret on the nice little arrangement made last year with the New Zealand Government. But they know their own business best. It cannot for one moment be supposed that they expect to have the contract renewed with them. As the owners of the City of Hobart have also acted —to say the least of it—so uncivilly, our obligations to Melbourne are not great: so much the better. It is quite time that New Zealand should look at home; and we have therefore great pleasure in watching the progress of such an enterprise as that of the New Zealand Steam Navigation Company, and in hearing of the proposed incorporation of another company at Dunedin. We have not felt much surprise at the conduct of the mail contractors —" Why should we ?" They have not earned the confidence of the colony. And, after all, Messrs. Nicholson were not bound to take a less narrow view of their opportunity. But what are we to say of the ' Otago Daily Times,' —a paper that pretends to be a New Zealand organ, and has affected to lead a popular cry —what are we to say of this paper, when we find that it does not consider either the owners of the Aldinga or of the City of Hobarj; to blame. The defence is lame and shambling enough, but the line taken confirms a suspicion we have long had, that the £ Daily Times ' is a New Zealand organ only in name. The utter failure to understand how the sympathies of the New Zealand colonists ran as to the question of separation; the appeals evidently addressed to the diggers fresh from "Victoria, and strangers to the colony; and the ignorance of New Zealand history and New Zealand institutions therein displayed —all showed more ambition to take a leading place in New Zealand journalism than ability to maintain it. But beyond all this, our contemporary has always shown that its inspirations are purely Victorian, and not due to the society of the colony. So long as Otago keeps up its communications with Melbourne, it is well. As long as the Postmaster-General did not furnish such communication between Otago and Melbourne as was deemed sufficient for all mercantile purposes, no name was bad enough for him. But once that was secured the tone of our contemporary changed, and, whether the English mail came or not, the Aldinga contract was applauded. Now the ' Daily Times ' comes forward gratuitously to say that the contractors were not in the least to blame for the last detention of the mail. Messrs. M'Meckan and Blackwood have an earnest and thorough-going, if not discreet i

champion. Little is known in one province of the local politics of another. Readers of the Otago papers have observed that the late Provincial Executive in that province have been plentifully abused by the ' Daily Times,' justly, perhaps—they thought —in a lazy way, if they thought about the matter at all. An attempt to shift the blame of the nonarrival of the mail on to the shoulders of the late Provincial Government tempts one to think less of former attacks on that Government. The payment claimed from Major Eichardson's Executive depended on the terms of a contract between the General Government and the mail contractors. At any rate, on the showing of the 4 Daily Times' itself, no excuse can be offered for the conduct of Messrs. M'Meckan and Blackwood. It is quite time that the General Government should authoritatively put an end to

all local tampering with the mail service. The colony pays quite enough to secure a good mail service, without Provincial assistance or meddling. If necessary, let a General Government agent be appointed in Melbourne, authorised to guarantee, on behalf of the General Government, any necessary expenses on an emergency. But let us never again have our mails left behind because two narrow-minded firms, after huckstering and bargaining over them, could not agree about £150. That they should have had the power to play this game is a disgrace to our Post-office authorities.