The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 1888.

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 100, 28 April 1888, Page 4

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

SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 1888.

For tho cause that lacks assistance, For the wron^ that needs resistance, For the future in tha distance, And th* good that \r« san do.

The comments of the Wellington

newspapers on our leader reviewing the report of Messrs Beetham, Buchanan, and Wilson regarding the central railway route are scarcely worth alluding to. The uncompromising condemnation of the central route by these members of Parliament has apparently completely nonplussed the " Post," and the editor, believing that the adverse. report has completely settled all chance of the construction of the central railway, adopts the paltry tactics of discrediting the value of the opinion of " amateurs," and seeks to make much out of the fact that those gentlemen did not consider it worth their while to examine any of the western routes.

The reputation of Messrs Beetham and Buchanan as judges of land is too good and too widely known to require any defence at our hands, and we take it for granted that their colleagues in the House will prefer to believe their manly disinterested and truthful report in preference to the "reports" of officials of the Public Works Department, who, being citizens of the city of Wellington, and subservient to Wellington Influence, have from the very outset sought to prejudice the public mind in favour of the central line. The value of the lucubrations of these officials has already been discounted by the woeful blunders they made in estimating the cost of construction of the line through the centre of the island, and as there are sundry little matters in connection with thef?9 gentlemen's previous dealings with the route question that will not

bear a searching investigation, we are inclined to believe that they will sing dumb when next the question comes before Parliament.

There is, of course, the danger of the Wellington members of the House adopting the dog-in-the-manger policy of " central route or none," and no doubt in this they would secure considerable support from the South Island. If, however, the Auckland members are united, if they take a leaf out of the book of the " Canterbury Phalanx" in their methods respecting the Midland Railway, there is not much reason for apprehension. The members of the House who were present at the conference with the Chamber of Commerce yesterday, were practically unamious in, their preference for the Stratford ,route; four-fifths of the Northern members are known to be similarly favourable, and Otago owes Auckland a debt of gratitude for past assistance that can only be recouped by standing shoulder to shoulder with the Northerners when the supreme moment arrives.