“The Press” In 1864

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30453, 29 May 1964, Page 10

“The Press” In 1864

May 30 WHY WE HAVE LOST THE PANAMA CONTRACT Did the House deny Mr Ward’s powers to make such a contract? or express any opinion in hostility to what he was about to do? Not by a single word . . . The House intended to leave the whole matter in the hands of the Government, and not to cripple its powers, and distinctly intimated so by its actions. To fall back, therefore, on the House after these notorious facts, and to throw the blame on the superannuated resolutions of 1862, is as miserable a subterfuge as was ever resorted to. Now this was at the end of November 1863. By the December mail Ministers might have written to England

letters which would have been received there in February. The Intercolonial Company had not then gone on ’Change,hand in hand with the Royal Mail Company, with the prospects of a new Company, nor had they begun to raise capital. It would have been possible to have saved them this trouble, and, to men of character in the City who consider it a shame to belong to bubble undertakings, this disgrace. * There was plenty of time to have stopped the thing before labour had been wasted and money invested. But the Ministers did nothing. In dealings of this kind amongst men of high commercial character, “silence gives consent" The colony has been compromised by the silence of the Government. Nor was this silence inadvertent It was dis-

tinctly pointed out, that if the Government did not write at once, they could not with honor withdraw from the contract at a later period. To remain silent from December till April gives the proceeding the character •of repudiation. The colony has been placed in a position of utter disgrace for which Ministers will be rudely called to account. All we can hope in the meantime is, that the Inter-colonial Company, informed of the matter in which the Colony has repudiated the shuffling of its Government and relying on the Canterbury guarantee, will go on and insist on the moral obligation of the contract Whether it is legally binding or not would hardly have been noticed except by a Government of At-torney-Generals. xs