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Free Lance, Volume VIII, Issue 399, 22 February 1908, Page 11

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public money the mattei is vitally important. Mr. Duthie also took occasion to say that " one of the best things the Board had ever done was to select Mr. Ferguson as its engineer, for the ■work he had carried out had established for him a reputation as an engineer and financier which was of the highest order. It was a veiy great disaster that a man of his rank and ability was now leaving the active control he had exercised so benencally." That was well said, and no one will seek to argue much on that eulogium The curious position into which Mr. Duthie has been betrayed however is this that he has condemned as imprudent the recommendation of the expert whom he has lauded to the skies The policy of the Wellington Harbour Board was modelled upon the ipse dixit, the expert advice of their able engineer, Mr Ferguson As to its prudence or imprudence, let it first be remembered that the Harbour Board has a quarter of a million in hand now, so that they are not on their beam ends for the want of that million. Mr. Fergusons recommendations to the Board were made in the light of prospective requirements, and the expenditure is to operate over four years of strenuous and probably unparalleled expansion in our shipping trade. Even now, it is stated by competent authorities that the Harbour Master is at times at his wits' end to know where to berth ships in our poit. If the King's Wharf and the Pipitea Street Wharf were both completed to-morrow they might both be fully occupied the day after. And what of the future under these circumstances? * * * Besides all this, the Harbour Board simply opened up the way for authority to borrow the money. That it will be required is obvious to

any commercial man in Wellington with half an eye in his head. The engineer found that £850,000 were absolutely necessary for works imperative in the future, and suggested the other £150,000 as a margin which he could leadily absoib in necessai> works It is very apparent, therefore, that to deliver this croak of lamentation Mr. Duthie stood on a veiy withered bianch of cnticism * * * Auckland is bidding stiongly loi a direct boat with the Homeland, and is determined to push ahead with her ovei sea business We have no jealousy towards Auckland ; hei advancement is New Zealand's advancement, and theiefore ours also. But we m Wellington must have regard to our own requirements as the central seaport foi the Dominion, and the Harbour Board's progressive policy is the only possible alternative to stagnation and decay The situation offers no other option The Harbour Board having taken the only possible course to prevent a calamity can scarcely stand accused of imprudence.

Mr. Marcus, manager for Allan Hamilton's "Home, Sweet Home*' Company, stated in Melbourne last week that far the New Zealand season of the play over £1000 were cleared. Mr. Nugent Welch, a Wellington artist, is holding an exhibition) of his work at the McGregor Wright Art Gallery at present. Mr. Welch's work is attracting much favourable notice, and many of his very fine pictures are already noticed as sold. The studies are varied, and treated throughout with marked boldness and skill. Some of the local subjects are admirable. Mr. Welch, who until recently was in the Harbour Board office is going on an artistic tour of the Mount Ruapehu and Mount Holdsworth districts, having left his office work to follow art.