NOTES

Lyttelton Times, Volume XV, Issue 896, 12 June 1861, Page 4

NOTES

By a Coeeectob of The Pbess. - [Continued^ FIGURES. Under the above title appeared in the'Press'of ; June 8, an article in reply to a correction I had ;. invited the editor to make in certain railway statistics published by him the week before. His statistics were compiled from a report made for 1860, andri took the liberty to point out that he had omitted to notice a material difference which the next paragraph of the same report stated to exist between the statistics of 1840 and 1860. I also pointed out to him that in the same report this material difference was attributed-to the increased competition which forced the company frequently to run half empty trains to time, instead of beinogoverned solely by the requirements of the traffic! My correction is thus replied to on June 8: "The writer will have the calculations made from the data of 1840. Nothing later than 1840! Now then :—lt appears we are to have two trains each way, that is 26 miles to be run in the day, trains being both goods and passenger trains. Add the passengers at 15s. Bd. per train mile to the goods 10s. llf d. per train mile, the result is £1 6s. 7|d per train mile. Multiply by 26 for the miles run per day, by*6 for the week, and by 52 for the year, and we make the result £10,796 2s. for the year's earnings at English rates in 1840 ! Which of course proves the truth of Mr. Dobson's estimates of the earnings at £53,000 and our baseness in suppressing the truth. Q.E.D. { Hurrah!" 'No, Sir! You have attacked without scruple and without foundation the characters and the professional ability of men evidently more honest than yourself. I have caught you in the fact; and 'instead of acknowledging frankly the error into which, at that time, I thought you had heedlessly fallen—instead of apologising to the gentlemen whom you had thus wronged—you assume the i bluster of a detected bully, and try another of your conjuring tricks. i - No, Sir!. "Providence has blessed you with I-abilities, instead of which" you last week jammed thirty millions of people on six-and-a-half miles of railway, at Mr. Dobson's expense; and now you seek to brave it out by valuing the Canterbury traffic at English prices. You know, Sir, as well as I do that, properly corrected, your own figures I stand thus— D 40,000 tons, instead of 60,000 108,000 passengers, instead of ...156,000 The latter 156,000 being Mr. Dobson's estimate of 500 per day for 313 days, and not 180,000 as stated by you. I passed over the minor error of your having chosen to assume 365 working days to the year for this occasion, and the major omission that even in 1840 the English railways were exposed to competition with each other, and with good and wellorganized roads and canals. I passed by all this and more in my last corrections, being then under the impression that I was dealing with one of that numerous class in this world,' fools who can write,' and my desire was to correct you as mildly and as good-humouredly as possible. Let me now tell you that it is a pleasure to find anything in your verbose paragraphs which does not require correction. You have yourself used the words 'base suppression of the truth,' and there—your Corrector says—they are well placed. WATEE SUPPLY. In referring to an article under the above heading, I have to correct the ' Press ' for doing that which it has held up as an atrocious crime in the projectors of the railway. Here we see the able and clear sighted paper coolly proposing to convert floating capital' into 'fixed!' Of course, judged by its own wonderful dicta, this is neither more nor less than a direct "robbery of the wa^es fund." Oh, would some power the giftie gi'e us To see onrsel yes as others see us!"

THE RAILWAY. More omissions of disturbing causes and cognate considerations—more false figures and more suppressions of well-known facts—are the characteristics of the article under the above heading in the 'Press' of June Bth. Why does the 'Press' " remember to forget," while denouncing Mr. Marshman's estimate of the Land Fund at £35,000 a year, that it has produced about that amount in six months only p But then, what is the utility of asking this, when the 'Press' has displayed throughout such a remarkable faculty of " remembering to forget," that I begin to think, if I am always to pick it up while tripping with its statistics, my office of Corrector will be no sinecure. I have, however, much pleasure in remarking that the ' Press/ is evidently becoming aware of its human frailty in this respect. Any reader of the article now referred to will observe a marked improvement in the tone: less dogmatism and more humility. The change is sufficiently striking to make me almost hope this sage periodical will at last discover that figures are useful only as a means of investigation to the student in the closet; and that, as a means of proof to a public which has neither time nor inclination to study them attentively, they are well known to be fallacious: nearly as much so as dogmatical facts. The time is probably approaching when the 'Press' will drop its statistical " dodges" altogether; but in the meanwhile I present it with the following 'tit-bit' for consideration — merely remarking, that to make the calculation more easy to its rather obtuse numerical faculties, I will use round numbers.

The ' Lyttelton Times ' has said on more than one occasion that the imports into Canterbury are £400,000 per annum. Now, I put it to the' Press' in its own language and to any impartial reader,' Is that—can that be an honest statement of fact ?' On the face of them do not these figures point to a foregone conclusion ?' We are really at a loss to say whether they are the result oi folly or oi fraud,' &c , &c, &c. 'Now let us test these figures by facts!' The imports into Great Britain are stated in the official returns at £120,000,000, that is, with a population of 30,00p,000, £4 for each one of the population. And'it is important to remember'that in Great Britain several millions of pounds' worth of cotton and other raw materials are manufactured for exportation, and swell materially the imports of that country. Now, in Canterbury there is a population of 15,000; multiply by £4 per head—that is £60,0001! And yet the 'Lyttelton Times' and the Custom House are base enough to call it £400,000!!' 'It is not' (as the ' Press' observes with Mr. Dobson) •it is not the difference only between the above figures, but the absurdity of that difference to which we wish to call attention!' Reader, I lay this before you as a fair specimen of the mode in which the theorems of the ' Press' are constructed throughout; and with this specimen I take what I sincerely hope will be my last farewell to the railway statistics of the ' Press.' THE OTAGO ELECTION.

" What," says the ' Press' of June 8, " has Mr. Macandrew done? Par be it from us," it continues, "to judge him," and then straightway it rushes off into a strong denunciation of his character and proceeedings—a denunciation richly merited by Mr. Macandrew, but carefully worded and winged by the 'Press' to suit a purpose which the most careless of its readers will readily see. That purpose is analogy; and to make the analogy suit its insidious design, the character and proceedings of Mr. Macandrew are artfully arranged in groups of paragraphs with the most important of each group skilfully concealed or, as usual with this honest and high minded paper, suppressed. Be the task mine to supply the missing features —a task upon which I enter with no pleasurable feelings, but from which, in the performance of my duty as. a faithful Corrector, I shall not shrink.

Mr. Macandrew has proved himself unworthy of the high office confided to his charge. But properly to draw a moral from his career it is requisite to supply an important omission in the sketch of the ' Press,' by stating how Mr. James Macandrew came into possession of that office, and of the arts by which he hoped to regain it when lost. Mr. Macandrew, then, until he was found out, was a respectable man—a man of " tried personal honesty" it was said in those days; though that he was shifty and unscrupulous in his political dealings was asserted by those who knew him well. But Mr. Macandrew was fluent of speech, clever with pen and tongue—one of those empty men one occasionally meets, so well defined as ' fools (or worse) who can write.' Mr. Macandrew was a great statistical authority and could prove black was white with more skill than any man in Otago, i.e. when there was no one by who would take the trouble to find him out. Mr. Macandrew was a pious, good man, who gained the confidence of the good simple pilgrim fathers of Otago—the plain settlers of the Tokomairiro and the Taieri the old hands of Port Chalmers and the old hands of Dunedin. That was Mr. Macandrew in his palmy days when he was elected Superintendent, and before he was found out; or the honest simple first settlers never would bave put him where they did. And when Mr. Macandrew was elected he did not give up his business, but he kept it on, and was truly Superintendent and James Macandrew and Co. at the same time. Let Canterbury be thankful that she has never had Superintendents like this. But there was one thing in which from the first Mr. Macandrew failed, and a very remarkable tbinoit was : he never could gain the confidence, or what he valued no doubt more, the votes of the new comers—they always said little but thought much Mr. Macandrew, they thought, had too much to do with immigration ; for many reasons those who deal in that and deal with brokers are open to suspicion. As the 'Press,' for once with truth observes— " People cannot touch pitch without being defiled." And this quotation of scripture reminds me of another peculiar characteristic of Mr. Macandrew. He could quote scripture, when it suited him, by the chapter. Let us be thankful that thisis a vice still unpractised in Canterbury." Now, in all these points—in continued self-glori-fication and boasting that he was not as other men —in parading his honesty and integrity for public admiration and his own profit—in making a virtue »r & What other men do as a matter of course —Mr. Macandrew did indeed most closely resemble Kmg Hudson, John Sadleir and Sir John Dean Paul buch men as these are never * smart' men The 'Press'is wrong in saying this, for they are too deep, too crafty, not to know the power an assumption of superior virtue gives. But there was, as I have said, one unvarying feature in the character of these men-they were all ' self-glorifying ' men. It was here that the cloven foot peeped throueh • and many a new chum looking at the paCtern man! has said toi himself,' Old fellow, when I hear a man boasting that he is better than h _ neighbours I begin to think there is a screw loose.somewhere •* and the new chums were not far wrong after all. Again, to the very last Mr. Macandrew was not only a confirmed boaster but a villifier (in the dark) ot other men. His last manifests from the gaol to which his evil courses had led him, contamed these words— not in his own name, of course "~~i. S teSr trerables in his shoes. Electors, vote for Macandrew—the only man who has the pluck to expose a nefarious Government." These were the last public utterances of James Macandrew, his last effort to attain his own ends by scattering suspicion over the land. Yes, oh 'Press '' 1 join with you in a fervent wish—may it be long

before we see a James Macandrew hTIT" Canterbury. m P°w<* i n POSTSCRIPT. Reader,—! have taken advantage of fh« «„i of a newspaper to address you as T umns private individual may do, in the form of °Uler paper correspondent. I -have avoided if r,ewsthe trite style of a ' Letter to the Editor • kWeVer> I desired that what I had to say should c ! a -ause attention in the most simple form »r,d ~- c y °Ur it is worth, and no more. g0 for w «at If the ' Press' proceeds with its elaT-. false theories and statistics you will find y vigilant ' Corrector' as heretofore But if Tpits back on its own high character, loffcv L ■-■ lls zeal for public purity, and such humbuJ 2 know what to think without consulting y *„J A COBBECTOB OF THE P aEsSi