CORRESPONDENCE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume I, Issue 38, 21 August 1880, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

i i [We do not hold ourselves responsible for

the opinions expressed by our correspondents. To ensure publication, however, it will be necessary for writers to avoid personalities.]

THE PROPOSED ROAD BOARD FOR

NGAIRE. TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR.

Sir, — At the last meeting of the Patea Council, at which it was resolved to call a meeting of the settlers of the Ngaire district, to take place at Normanby on Tuesday, the 24th instant, for the purpose of forming a road board for this district, the information was elicited from the chairman that the General Government intended to shelve the responsibility of completing the metalling of the Mountain road. This is sei-ious and startling intelligence for the numerous body of small settlers who within the last twelve months, with but very little means, have engaged themselves in the hard struggle of reclaiming the wilderness of this district, and rendering it the smiling garden which nature intended it to become under the industrious hands of man. The Patea County Council are apparently determined also not to undertake any responsibility in regard to it. This, of course, means that the work is to be lpft undone, or that the settlers of Ngaire must help themselves in the matter, through the medium of a road board ; and either alternative of these must necessarily be fatal to the existence of the great majority of them as settlers, as a railway can act as a substitute for a road only in a very slight degree at the present stage of the district, and is, in fact, years in advance of the actual requirements of this special portion of the province. It is difficult to characterise the conduct of the Government in this matter in appropriate terms, as it involves a breach of faith of no ordinary character. There is* not a settler in the Ngaire district who had not been assured, before purchasing the land, that the Government iutended to ( complete this road. Had this not been the case, the circumstances of the district would be far different to what they are at the present moment. No plea of impecuniosity can mitigate the deception that has been perpetrated upon the settlers by the action of the Government. They have, in effect, offered certain wares for sale to the working man to serve him as a source of future existence, representing them as genuine and complete -with the necessary appurtenances for utilising them ; but when ' the money is paid, and the wares unpacked, they are discovered to be deficient of the most necessary appurtenance, which renders them a burden instead of a benefit to the poor purchaser ; and the Government seem to think it quite sufficient exoneration from any guilt in the matter to state that they cannot afford to give better wares for the money. What any purchaser of wares should claim under similar circumstances, the settlers of Ngaire have a right to demand of t the Government — that is, to have their money returned to them, together with compensation for their labor and loss of time. As, no doubt, it would be fruitless to attempt any such course, it only remains for the settlers to use every effort to claim what was clearly an. implied condition of the sale of their land — that is, the completion of the Mountain road by the Government. It appears a most extraordinary incident in the policy of the Government, in the matter of their responsibility for constructing the main trunk roads of the colony, that the line should be first drawn at what may be termed the poor man's settlement. To illustrate the case more clearly, it need only be pointed out how the land speculators, who are the owners of land between Stratford and Inglewood have had their portion of the road completed, whilst the poor settlers of Ngaire are left in tlie lurch to struggle under disad vantages tphieii trould crush stronger backs than theirs, so that they may the more easily be gobbled up by-and-by, with the fruits of their labors, by the rapacious land-sharks. Settlers of Ngaire :- the present is a critical moment for the future of your settlement. Attend the meeting of the 24th, at Normanby, and use your influence to cause a postponement of the formation of a road board until the question of the completion of the Mountain road is decided upon. Your efforts to establish independent homes are threatened to be nipped in the bud. Attend to your interests, or be for ever fallen. — I am, &c, A Ngaire Settles. Mangawhero, August 16.

For remainder ok Reading Matter,

see Fourth Page.