The Press. TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 1865. THE PANAMA CONTRACT.

Press, Volume VII, Issue 686, 10 January 1865, Page 3

The Press. TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 1865. THE PANAMA CONTRACT.

What has become of the Panama Contract ? We all recollect how warm Canterbury was on the subject a few months ago. Not only the people, but the Superintendent and Provincial Council united in asserting that the contract ought to be ratified, and the honor of the colony maintained, even at some sacrifice of private opinion. We are very sorry to say, —but there is no use in abstaining from saying it plainly—the contract has not been ratified, and the honor of the colony has not been maintained. How has this come about ? There were several interests at work in the House of Eepresentatives. First there were -the members of the Whitaker Government, who had taken upon themselves to repudiate the contract with-, out waiting for the judgment of the Assembly ; and not only that, but who had informed the company that so far as possible they would use their interest in the Assembly to prevent the ratification of the contract. Next, there was the Wellington Company, which has been setting up a number of boats, many of them of a very inferior class, and which bitterly opposed the monopoly clauses in the contract, because it hoped to share in the subsidies for the postal service on the New Zealand coasts. The Otago Company had also its representatives in the House, whose commercial interests were equally opposed to the contract as it stood. Again, the Government itself was not united on the subject, for whilst the Premier and some of the members of the Cabinet were in favor of the ratification of the contract, the Postmaster-General was clearly opposed to it. Thus it fell out that the simple question as to whether the contract should be ratified or not was never put to the House at all. The Lyttelton Times says that it would have been carried —or at all events implies as much. The Otago Daily Times denies it altogether. In ouri judgment the issue would have been very] doubtful; but we are inclined to the opinion j that had the Government made the question a ministerial one, the ratification would have been carried pure and simple. This, how- j ever, is but an opinion, which must be taken for what it is worth; for all very close j divisions depend so much on the accidents of the moment, upon the attendance of all the members, or the unavoidable absence of one or two at the moment of the division, that it is impossible to be certain how the question might have gone. The majority of the House would undoubtedly have done a great deal before it would have sacrificed Mr. Weld's Government and seen an Auckland Government in power again ; on the \ whole, therefore, we think the motion would have been carried. And here we cannot

help saying that Mr. Ward's refusal to take office in a Government composed of members with most of whom he has always acted, at all events with whom lie has never had any marked difference of opinion, especially when the contract about which he was so anxious depended in a great measure on the management of the affair in the House falling into unquestionably friendly hands ; —Mr. Ward's refusal, we say, to take office under these circumstances occasionednotalittleperplexity to his friends. ISo one who has enquired into the events in the House of Representatives, can doubt that the contract would have met a very different fate had it Been brought before the House by some friendly hand, especially by Mr. "Ward, instead of by a j gentleman who gave every facility to its enemies to smash it. And we cannot help saying that when Mr. Ward had the opportunity of joining the Cabinet to carry the contract through, his shrinking from the task requires a little explanation. Inhis speech to the electors at Lyttelton, he cautiously abstained from any allusion to that part of the subject. However this may be, it was sufficiently clear that the Postmaster General, Major Richardson, would have been very glad to throw the whole thing over, and Mr. Weld, who was pledged to the contract by the part he had taken in persuading thej public and Government of Canterbury to take it up when it was repudiated by the J Whitaker Ministry, was unfortunately so overburdened with the work attaching to the two departments which he was at the time administering, that he was able to take a very small part in the question, and was often out of the House when it was under i discussion. The line taken by the Govern- j ment was a middle one. They feared to put | the question to the test of a direct vote, and j so run the risk of its rejection altogether; but they resolved to bring in a Bill which should empower the Governor to ratify the contract under certain unexpressed conditions. Eut the party in the House who were adverse to the contract managed to get the conditions inserted in the Bill in the most stringent form, instead of being left to the Government to be dealt with by negotiation. The fight, therefore, was of a guerilla character : as Mr. Vogel aptly expressed it, " each party thought it had the Government on its side and could mould the Bill to suit its own views." The battle was for adding something here or leaving out something there j one side striving to get as much of a recognition of the contract as it could, the other side trying to load the Bill with such restrictions as should topple it over. It was not discussed so much whether the contract should be ratified or not, as whether certain clauses or words in the Bill would amount to a ratification or. not. The result however is—there is no disguising it —that the contract is thrown over, to the deep disgrace and serious injury of the colony for many years to come. Our readers will remember that we j never highly approved of this contract. It was not a good contract. It was not a desirable thing to pay for one service by giving anything like a monopoly mi another. But we upheld it because it was made by a Minister of the colony in England,! who, though he legally exceeded his powers, j did so only to that extent and in that way in which Ministers often do, and often ought to, exceed their legal powers, fori the sake of obtaining great ends. If the colony could afford to pay for this contract, if it was one in which the public interests, not the interests of shareholders in private companies, but the interests of the public of the colony were consulted, then we hold that as a matter of public honor and integrity the colonial parliament was bound to accept and ratify the act of the Executive Government. WowMr Ward clearly showed in his speech that, even without borrowing from any other service, that is to say, still maintaining the Melbourne service to Otago, and the Sydney service to Auckland, the annual cost of the Panama service would be only in excess of the sum voted three years ago by £15,000, an excess, too, which would annually diminish; and Mr. Ward, in our opinion, put the argument on a true and statesmanlike basis when he said—"ought I for the sake of £15,000 a-year to have let such an opportunity of establishing such, a splendid service drop through?" The Verdict of the colony would have been, we are persuaded, that he would hare neglected the duty he was commissioned to fulfil had lie done so. Those who are in the habit of travelling round the coasts of New Zealand must admit that however objectionable a monopoly is in theory, the evils of monopoly are, at all events, not apparent here. The class of boats, and the manner in which the boats are. conducted by the Panama Company is such as to lead us almost to hope that the encouragement of a ; monopoly may be granted to it for a few years. It must be admitted on all hands that the services are most admirably performed, and that since thc boats have been

under the inspection of Capt. Tine Hall the service has been all that could possibly be wished. That certainly cannot be said of the boats of the Wellington Company, some of which are very insufficient both in size and speed. Therefore, objectionable as monopolies are, there was every mitigating circumstance in the present case. Besides, in a proper sense of the term, there was no monopoly at all proposed. All that was proposed was that the Panama Company should have a contract for carrying the mails for a certain number of years at a certain price. It was open to any other boats to engage in passenger and cargo traffic, should that traffic increase so as to make it worth their while. The result, however, is that an Act has been passed enabling the Governor to ratify the contract with the Panama Company on conditions which any men of sense and business must have known the Company could not accept. Our readers will recollect that we always said from the first that the service could not be performed for £63,000, nor was the speed proposed sufficient, in our opinion, to secure the regular prosecution of the voyages. The Company looked to incidental advantages for a remuneration in their speculation ; they looked to numerous branch lines from the main trunk, which would have secured a profit on the whole. But these incidental advantages are cut off by the recent Act. In fact, it comes simply to this : a new contract must be made, which will cost the colony a great deal more than Mr. Ward's contract, or the whole thing must be abandoned. And this will be the verdict on the whole case —that the main reason why the colony has retreated from the magnificent task it imposed upon itself, is simply because some local speculators have chosen to invest their money in steamboats. We had occasion some time ago to point out the dangerous influence which a great trading firm like the Bank of New Zealand was likely to have upon the politics of the colony. The same remark applies to these large steamboat companies. The Wellington Company has been buying old boats at very large prices, solely to enable it to take up the services immediately required, for which subsidies were offered by Government. Experience has shown that these steam companies are largely and influentially represented in the Assembly. We warn the public to look ahead. Let the electors look to it, and see whether a year or two hence those very gear tlemen who are so very eloquent against monopoly, as causing unnecessary extravagance, will not be equally and as successfully eloquent in favor of continuing bonuses to the "local enterprises" they represent, long after the time when such subsidies have ceased to be necessary. -the slang maxims of the political economists will have been successfully worked to destroy the Panama Line, which would have placed New Zealand first in the colonies of the Southern Seas .- let us take care that the same maxims are not ignored by the perpetration of monstrous jobs in favor of those ." local enterprises.' 1 ' We f have seen in England' lately how powerful are these subsidised mail contracts to buy political support, even in a Parliament of 650 members. What will tbey not be able to do in a House of.:)S5 members? A contract with the Panama Company, at all events, would pot. have involved us in this danger; and tho service .not being under the patronage of political allies would have been muck more strictly looked after by Government in the protection of. the public interests. Mr. Ward's contract is no more. Whether Mr. Weld can make a new one acceptable to the House, which will satisfy the Company instead of what thej have lost, remains to be seen. The practical question is, will Canterbury agree to con* tribute something towards it? More than £63,000 will have to be paid. Wellington, we hear, will contribute £10,000. If Canterbury will take a share, and Nelson—one can hardly expect Otago to do much ia her present frame of mind—and Sydney and Queensland can be moved, as we confidently believe they can—and could have been at first had they been asked by those who wished the contract 'to be saved, instead of by men who had made up their minds to destroy it— in that case we yet hope that the work may yet be set going in a few months.

Crrx ComvcTL.—At a meeting of the City Council held yesterday evening, the Mowing resolution wti agreed to:—"That an addressbe presented to his Excellency the Governor on the occasion of his visit to the city of Christchurch, and that such address be presented by the Chairman of the City Connoilaooom--panied by the members of the Council, at the levee to be held by his Excellency; thafcthe,Ctouncildir«ct£he decoration of the public bn_dings within, the city with flags and other emblems upon "the occasion in question. The Council does not howevW, deem it advisable that any procession should be formed to accompany his Excellency to his residence on his arrival, beyond the military' escort a_reac_r agreed upon 5 that the Chfunnan of the OovneU; be authorised to invite his Excellency the an official dinner to be given at HJwl; onsuch evening as may be convenient tdnß!fow^eatiJr ,,

Fxacxsa' Th___xx.—The performance at the theatre hat night was an unusually comprehensive one, Area pieces being on the programme —The Loan of a Lover, H.MB. Spitfire, and the Fair One "with the Golden Locks. H.M.S. Spitfire is certainly one of the most ridiculous farces ever placed on a stage, and though it has been seen dozens of times here, Mr. Hall's acting as the Minories tobacconist, troffering ihe sharpest pangs of seasickness and terror, never tires one. The Fair One with the Golden Lodes has not been worn threadbare yet; and Mr. Halt in this piece also, by his cruel burlesque on a well-known singer, kept the audience in roars of laughter. To-night Mr. Lyster- company give Wallace- "Lurline," an opera that has not been performed before here.