The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News and the Morning News. MONDAY, MAY 3, 1876

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1626, 3 May 1875, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News and the Morning News.

MONDAY, MAY 3, 1876

For the cause that Jacks assistance, lor the wrong tint nee^ls reolKiaaca, °OT the future in the distance. Ani the good that we c&a do.

We would direct attention to a valuable and suggestive letter from Mr. Newman, in another column, bearing on railway mismanagement. The present dunder-headed conduct which characterises our local railway is patent enough in its results, to the eye of the most casual observer. But we have not the smallest expectation that the enlightened and sensible views, of which Mr. Newman is in his letter the exponent, will be entertained until there is a clean sweep away of the present management. The illustration of the conditions of progress exemplified in the penny-post is thread-bare, but it is none the less valuable. A hundred instances of rapid and startling progress can trace their origin to the bold daring of Rowland Hill, but a hundred, thousand such instances would be thrown away upon the class of menwhp see not farther than the tops of their noses, and whose minds could by no possibility be expanded to the noble conception of throwing a sprat to catch a mackerel. When the railway policy was projected we were assured ad nauseam that the profits of railway extension in a new country would be indirect; that not the immediateTeturns in freights and fares would be sought, but mainly the promotion of settlement and other colonizing objects ; and through these railways would ultimately be made to pay first for the '' fat required for the carriage wheels," then working expenses, then interest on cost of construction, and then profit to the revenue. But, like many another fair dream of fancy that attended the birth of the Great Policy, all this has vanished into thin air ; and now the necessity of providing pabulum for the whole army of bloodsuckers who have fastened an our public service, and the necessity of purchasing political support, have entirely reversed the order of things, and the conception and realization of the Policy have been as opposite as two things well can be. The fact that the Onehunga 'busses are successfully competing with the railway, supplies a striking commentary, not only on the local railway, but on the utter failure of the great Policy in our portion of the colony at leaßt. It has been a case of bit* promises and little resultß, plenty of cry and no wool.

The suggestions made by Mr Newman are such as might present themselves to any intelligent man ; and it is almost impossible to conceive how any man invested with the power of using these means of success could be so utterly stupid as to neglect them. To have the fires banked up, and the engines simmering at the terminus—while coach after coach runs to and from Onehunga, while the rails are lying unused, and the interest is accumulating, and the hands are drawing pay, and the public are growling at the disregard of all ideas of convenience—altogether combine, to produce an illustration of how not to do it, which could hardly be exceeded. Our correspondent alludes to the absence of any public notification of the hours of the departure of the trains. Perhaps it becomes not a journal to endorse this, and especially one that lies under the awful ban of Mr Frank B. Passmore's displeasure, because of our strictures on the incompetency exhibited in the management of this railway. But there are two other daily journals in Auckland besides this, and how is it that no one knows when the trains are to leave ? For the saving of a few shillings invested thus, pounds are lost, and the public are put to the extreme of inconvenience. All the suggestions of our correspondent as to "sidings" for the convenience of settlers, etc., are quite in the practical spirit that is so characteristic and necessary amid the exigencies of colonial life; but "imported" talent picked vp — Heaven knows where or wherefore—cannot be expected to look at these thingg in other than the "haw haw" stylo that becomes those who bask in the lustrous splendour of the "great policy." For the realisation of Mr Newman's simple practical sensible ideas, we must only look to the inevitable sweeping out of the rubbish that has aggregated during the past few years of public extravagance. And it cannot be far distant now.