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

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 177, 28 July 1888, Page 4

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

SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1888.

For the causo that lacks assistance, Por the wrong: that needs resistance, Tor the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

The Auckland members have done the country some service in effectually

stonewalling the Otago Centralßailway Bill. The-fact that this Bill, through persistent lobbying, has obtained the support of a majority of the House of Eepresentatives, despite. the official reports which are dead against giving away the Crown estate to a syndicate of speculators for such a purpose, shows the thoroughly demoralised condition to which the Faxliament of the colony has been reduced by the reckless policy of the last eighteen years. In the case of this railway we see the same Parliament which has authorised the funding of a large deficit, besides adding some hundreds of thousands of pounds to the heavy taxation of the country to pay interest on unprofitable railways, deliberately proposing to make a crift of 7,850,000 worth of Crown fands, to be selected from estates which are already yielding the colony & revenue of a year, for the construction of a line which will not merely be of no public advantage but, according to the testimony of the Surveyor-General, will be a very serious injury to the prosperity of the country by interfering with the important goldfields .which are distributed along the whole of the country from which these land grants are to be made. That Mr Pyke has found it possible 1 fco set so far with his scheme is due mainly to the time-serving policy of tii <! Ministry. The Canterbury members, also, having got their Midland railway scheme through, cannot, we suppose with a good grace refuse to help to.roll a similar log for Otago. Neither Ot^go nor Canterbury, however, has an/ scruples about stopping all contracts on the North Island trunk railway, which was one of the cardinal features of the original public works policy, nor in opposing the granting of any concession for the construction of the North Auckland railway, which opens a district that offers the finest field in the coiony for small settlers. Throughout the present session it has been made manifest that except in Auckland there is really no sincerity in this retrenchment cry. The House is ready enough to accept any sacrifices we in our generosity may be willing to make for the good of our country, but the South is as determined as ever to go on with the old game of forcing up its prosperity at the expense of the rest of the colony; and this scheme of taking revenue - producing Crown lands as special endowments for railways which have been brought to a standstill by the discontinuance of borrowing, is the most adroit as well as the .most impudent scheme that has been attempted in the colony since tho time when the provinces seized the whole of the magnificent Crown estate, and applied it to local purposes. If such' a policy is to be pursued, then the claims of Auckland to similar endowments musfc be enforced even at the cost of organising a stonewall that will reduce Parliamentary business to chaos.

Southemmembers,ourParliamentary reporter tells us, are already breathing out threatenings against the San JJrancisco service, in consequence of the action of the Auckland members on this Bill. We hope our representatives will not be deterred by such threats from fighting it >to the bitter end. . The San* Francisco service is clearly proved to be the best for the colony, and it must stand on its own bottom. But even if the maintenance of that service were offered as a bribe to Auckland members for their support of this Otago Central railway job, we hope that they would have the honesty to reject it with scorn. This £850,000 worth of Crown lands would be a bigpnee to pay for the San Francisco mail service. Barely a week ago we saw Southern members stonewalling a paltry endowment of £5,000 worth of land which had been granted to the Auckland Girls' High School, but gazetted to the purposes of primary education in error. And the leaders in this stonewall were representatives of districts which, during the Provincial era, plundered the Crown estate for the endowment of every kind of institution, it is the same local feeling and local interests that lie at the bottom of the intrigue against the San Francisco mail service. So long, however, as the Auckland members remain united and resolute, we have no fear but that they will be able to wring justice from the House, no matter how reluctantly it may be accorded.