Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1904. A MARK OF CIVIC PROGRESS.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 137, 7 December 1904, Page 4

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1904. A MARK OF CIVIC PROGRESS.

Another important stage is marked today in Wellington's progress towards a higher civic life. The- building of the Town Hall is already an accomplished fact, and the Mayor will have thrown it open to what we trust <wiß. prove a useful and honourable career befor-o these lines will meet our readers' eyes. The work has been one of the largest, and not far from the most urgently necessary, of the many important undertakings which have signalised the recent era of municipal activity; and the City Council has carried it through with a happy minimum of disappointment and detraction. The chorus of cavillers and croakers who on principle denounce everything that the Council does, whether for quod or foxevil, has, of course, had something to say, bnt it has been, comparatively little. The most notable discovery was that the organ which had been ordered wss so large that it could not stand upright without making a hole in the roof, but enquiry proved this discovery to be entitled to the higher rank of an invention, and with this the record of civic crime in connection with the Town Hall was at an end. To-day we think that the citizens as a whole will rejoice at the completion of a great work, and will not feel disposed to grudge the very heavy cost which it has entailed. The city has long outgrown the poky offices in Brandon-street, in which the largest room could not accommodate a hundred people in comfort, and. it has now a splendid building in a more central site, and a meeting place for its citizens fully worthy of the capital of the colony. A Town Hall does not make a city, and a city may thrive and do good w-pr& without one, but it is beyond question that-a-city ia (seriously ban-

dicapped if it lacks a. place where the citizens may meet in adeqaate numbers and discuss its public affairs, and it is equally unquestionable that there is no city ia the colony which has suffered more seriously from this defect than the City of Wellington. Nature has been prodigal in endowing our city with a harbour and a geographical position which are without a rival throughout the colony, bnt the niggardliness of her land endowment affords a set-off to this liberality which has resulted in narrow streets, minute subdivisions, and high rents, and has indirectly hampered our public and onr social life in many ways. High rents and high prices for land have meant that public halls have not proved a profitable investment, and while the city has continued to thrive and to grow at an astonishing pace, its facilities of this kind have certainly not increased proportionately, even if they have not actually diminished. Only within the last few months the Exchange Hall, which, small and inconvenient as it was, -was the best place next to the Opera House for a general public meeting, has been diverted from its original purpose and cut up into shops; and when the supporters of the Shops and Offices Act desired to call a meeting a fortnight ago to discuss a sub-ject-which was arousing intense interest in all classes of the community, the Druids' Hall was practically their only choice for a meeting-place, and, fearing that sp small a hall #might be swamped by their opponents, they decided upon admission to their "mass meeting" by ticket only. With a Town Hall accommodating 3000 people and a smaller hall in the same building which will seat 700, agitators will no longer be driven to such straits or such subterfuges. But the change will not only be a boon to general and municipal politics ; it will also provide a valuable stimulus to the social and intellectual life of the place. It is no accidental coincidence that the Musical Union has been revived jrrst in time to take the Town Hall for the first week after its opening. Music has suffered seriously in the city from the want of a suitable place where performances on a large scale could be organised. With music as with politics it has often been "the Opera House first and the rest nowhere" ; and if the Opera House has been engaged, as it commonly is, for professional purposes, it has been a case of nowhere. The gain to the musical life of the city which is represented by the removal of such an obstacle is too obvious to need discussion, and other non political causes will profit in a similar way. Sixty thousand pounds is indeed a large sum, but if the wisest cannot say what precise return in kind the city.Vill get for the expenditure, the dullest can surely see that some benefits will accrue whioh are beyond measurement in money. As we have said, a Town Hall does not make a city. "Tools and the man," in Carlyle's phrase, are both essential factors in a good work; but the Town Hall should be a valuable tool in the hands of the citizens of Wellington to help them make the public t life of their city more worthy of its natural advantages and its commercial prosperity.