POLITICAL RAILWAYS IN OTAGO

Evening Post, Volume LXXIV, Issue 49, 26 August 1907, Page 6

POLITICAL RAILWAYS IN OTAGO

When Mark Twain was serving his brief apprenticeship to Tennesec journalism, the editor of the Morning Glory and Johnson County War-whoop, to which ho was attached, administered the following gentle correction to a contemporary journal which had overlooked the claims of Buzzardville to inclusion in a local railway scheme: — "The inveterate liars of the Semi-weekly Earthquake are evidently endeavouring to palm off Nipon a noble and chivalrous people another of their vile and brutal falsehoods with regard io that most glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the Ballyhack railroad. Tho idea that Buzzardville was to bo left off at one side originated in their own fulsome brains — or rather in the settlings whioh they regard as brains. They had better s'.vallow this lie if they want to save their abandoued reptile carcas2s the cowhiding they so richly deserve." Wo are pleased to think that in these latitudes the erring journalist is not exposed to these terrible perils of physical violence and vitriolic invective. But the comparative mildness of the language in which we have been rebuked does not conceal from us the fact that in depreciating "that most glorious conception of the nineteenth century," tho Otago Central Railway, our sin has been at least as great as that of tho Semi-weekly Earthquake. The article which we published on the subject on tho 21ct inst. Js described by ths Duuedin Star as " candid to the point of brutal cynicism," as "an ungenerous and misleading attack upon the rights and interests of another province," and even as "outrageous." The thought that tho Ballyhack Railway shall not go to Buzzardville is not to be endured ; the parochial patriot is reminded that influences are at work which aro " frankly inimical to tho interests of the province," and is adjured to work and to vote as all parochial patriots should. It is vi^ry -crushing for our unlucky selves, ani very edifying for the representatives of Otago ; but in the name of all that is rationally patriotic, and all that is sanely parochial, what is the fuss aboun? We have not set 4 up tho claims of Wellington to any of the public money that would otherwise bo allocated, to Otago, nor have we had any other dark design upon the prosperity of tho Southern province. All ■wo suggested was that further expenditure on a line which w© bclievo to be a political extravagance should be delayed untir its propriety, had been established by an independent, non-ptuit&i-al, expert enquiry. Though the Lawrence-Box--burgh 1 railway deputation was the itnmediate/occasion 01 our article, und Mr. John MacGregor's recent account of the political railways of Otago supplied us with another example, wo should be very glad to see such an enquiry given a general scope, so that the extraordinary expenditure which is entailed by all these dubious locul schemes should be checked, and alternative routes provid- 1 ed where the occasion so demands. As to Mr. MacGregor's > detailed exposure of tho extent to which political considerations havo impaired the efficiency of the railway service of Otago, some weightier refutation is needed than a reforonce to his "fantastic theories" and a sneer at "the Evening Post and its 'disinterested' Dunedin mentor." Mr. MacGrngor's obvioui endeavour is to study tho interests of the colony as a whole, and this is always anathema to the parochial mind. We can truthfully say that our criticism owed as little as his to tho petty local feeling which hus inspired our contemporary's rejoinder.