THE CANTERBURY TIMES THIS DAY. The Lyttelton Times. SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 1866.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXV, Issue 1650, 31 March 1866, Page 2

THE CANTERBURY TIMES THIS DAY. The Lyttelton Times. SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 1866.

A Post-office advertisement in our columns to-day invites tenders for a weekly mail service between Christchurch and Hokitika for the half-year which will begin on the Ist of July neit. The public will observe that the matter is wholly in the hands of the General Government, to whom the Postal department belongs; and that it is not the Chief Postmaster of this province, who is the local head, but the Postmaster-General himself, who is the central and supreme officer, that is to decide on the tenders when they are sent in. And yet the interest in the mail service in question is almost wholly local; the conditions under which it can be performed have been provided by, and perhaps are only known thoroughly to, the Provincial authorities; and it is through the labour and expense which they have bestowed upon the road that an overland mail service between the East and West Coasts has become a practical and tangible fact at all. At the present moment, in return for all the expenditure of the province, what the Hokitika road can do is to give opportunity to passengers with money from that side to come over and visit this side for pleasure or business ; and to permit correspondence of all kinds to be carried expeditiously and safely backwards and forwards. The latter is by far the most direct and certain advantage of the two, though the probable benefits of the former are not to be overlooked. It is rather singular, therefore, that the province should have been at all this pains and expense chiefly to provide means for postal communication ; and when that is done, that another Government should have the option of choosing whether or not it will permit the province to take advantage of the means so provided. We do not, at this stage of the question, impute negligence to the General Post office in not taking sufficient advantage of the road by offering only a weekly service; all we have to do is to point out how imperfectly the system of administration in the colony works, owing to the breaks which continually occur between one Government and another —from want of sympathy, want of knowledge, want of a common control, or whatever cause —of which theHokitika mail service isasufficiently striking example. Had the Provincial Government been responsible for the postal arrangements,we should never have seen an advertisement calling, for tenders, —now that the road is fully open and traversed by coach twice a week —for a service less frequent than the coaches' trips between two such places as Hokitika and Christchurch. It would be more likely that the local Government would at once create a communication three times a week, which is as often as separate services can be performed at present by coach. This would be done with a view, not only to the conveyance of correspondence, but also in some degree to encourage the use of the road for passenger traffic. There is, as we all know, a third great administrative power concerned in the communication question, besides the General and Provincial Governments, j and that is King Cobb. The representatives of the firm of Cobb and Co., famous throughout all these colonies for opening up new districts to passenger traffic, have given life and practical reality to the West Coast Eoad. Without their presence, it is quite possible that the road might now be open without serving the public to the slightest appreciable extent. Fortnightly mails, taking a week on the journey, might have been carried by the ounce on horseback. Independent spring carts, driving an unchangeable pair of horses from end to end, might have started on a journey now and then, " sufficient inducement offering." Or, granted that King Cobb's arrangements in a neighbouring colony might have set a brilliant example here, we could have expected little better than an imperfectly organized, inefficient, and quickly terminable service. It is not at all undue praise to Messrs. Cole and Co., to repeat that to their energy, skill, and experience must be ascribed a large share of whatever practical results may be reaped for this part of the province by its connection with the Goldfields of the West. We fully believe, therefore, that the Provincial Government, to whom the credit of determined perseverance in accomplishing their object is due, recognize how the institution of " Cobb and Co." is calculated to turn their work to a profit to the state,and are ready to encourage every legitimate development of the coaching arrangements. The necessary encouragement would be best given through the Postoffice ; and the Provincial Government will doubtless be able to influence that department to Borne extent. That is to say, it ought to be an immediate concern of the Executive to communicate with the General Government, with the view of inducing the Post-office to increase the number of trips each way to two, at least, every week ; less than this amount of communication would be absolutely inadequate for the wants of the present time; and we should recommend them, in anticipation of the certain increase which a few months more must produce, to bargain for a postal service three times a week. And the Provincial Government should not submit to a refusal. If objections be raised on the score of economy, and they prove insurmountable, then the province, which reaps a benefit not from letters only but from passengers also, should undertake the payment of the requisite additional subsidy. We may almost take it for granted that the two Governments and the coach proprietor are quite ready to work into one another's hands on some such understanding.