The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, The Morning News and The Echo. FRIDAY. NOVEMBER 15, 1878

Auckland Star, Volume IX, Issue 2676, 15 November 1878, Page 2

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

FRIDAY. NOVEMBER 15, 1878

For the cause that acks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

Government by Under-Secretaries is bad enough, in all conscience, but a more intolerable thing still is Government by District Engineers, aud this latter abomination is precisely what the existing condition of departmental control is rapidly ('rifting into. The battle of the routes for the Waitakeiei section of the KaiparaPuniu Railway has been raging for some time with varying success, and now we are in the midst of another similar struggle over the Morningside Station. The author of all this dire contention and strife, an. officer in the Public Works Departmeat, can afford to behold the struggle with that kind of philosophic indifference that may. be supposed to animate the breast of a spectator who is out of the range of shot. In 1876 a/petition was presented to Pailiament against the selection of a site fpr, a railway-station on the property of !Mr Taylor, at Morningside. ~ The petition ers proved by irrefragable facts and [figures that' a statioji on that, site; would jbe disadvantageous to the requirements pf the district,: and that the centre of traffic demanded that the station should be placed at the 'junction of the Great North and

Cabbage Tree Swamp Roads, where the bulk of the population resides, and where the railway would be raosteasily accessible. The petition was carefully considered by a committee of the House, who reported emphatically in its favour. Again in a subsequent session the same question was raised, when Mr Conyers, and several influential Auckland members thoroughly acquainted with the local circumstances, confirmed the report of the Petitions Committee in favour of the site at -the junction. But in spite of all this, departmental red tape and theoretical engineering threaten to carry the day. Mr Stewart backs his own superior wisdom against the opinions of the representatives of the people in Parliament assembled, Mr Conyers and the people themselves to boot, and clings to the site on Mr Taylor's property with a species of blind fondness and obstinacy, only to be equalled by that of a parent for his offspring. There are people in this world whose mental organization is so constituted that they are perpetually running a-muck against the common judgment of the mass, and coming in for hard knocks _in consequence. Such men may be pitied but they ought to be restrained from riding their hobbies regardless of everybody else. We cannot afford to be under the domination of obstinate subordinates, nor ought the public works of the district to be delayed by tantalising obstructions while those in the South are pushed on with the vigour and celerity of a greased wheel. The public will look to Messrs Conyers and Lawson, wlio may be expected in Auckland in a few days hence, to set the machine to rights, and to remove any awkward cog which stops its progress.