The New Zealand Herald AUCKLAND, SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 1866.

New Zealand Herald, Volume III, Issue 682, 20 January 1866, Page 4

The New Zealand Herald

AUCKLAND, SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 1866.

SPECTE3IUK AGENDO. " Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice : Take c.ach man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Thia above all,—To thine ownsolf be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.' 1

We have already glanced at the report of ( the Kailway Commissioners and of their , Engineers, and purpose saying a few words ; more on these rather curious documents, ' and on the subject of the Kail way generally On reading the former, wo cannot but he struck with the remarkable straiu in which it is written. The Commissioners appear to > dwell much more on " the pleasures of i hope," than on " the ploasures of memory " | —of the latter they have indeed very few, but they indulge rather largely in the , former. In mildly confessing the evils of . the past, the Commissioners say " a better 1 state of things is anticipated, and the works are expected to be prosecuted with vigour," and should the coming winter be favourable, etc., something great will be done; should in fact nothing happen to upset the calculations of the Commissioners, why it is probable their calculations will not be upset. Everything would have happened right, but that every tiling happened wrong. No. 1 section would have progressed satisfactorily hut for certain very satisfactory reasons given, and No. 2 would have been finished within the sp'ecified time, but for the large beds of scoria rock met -with in Mr. Dilworth's field. We are not told what the scoria rock was doing when it was " met with," nor whether it should be : looked upon as a poacher or trespasser, or a friend taking an early morning constitutional or not. The Commissioners, so far as we can judge from their report, find that they have made a mess of the work, but do not like to make a clean breast of it, and say so in plain English. Their language is that of one conscious of guilt, but who wishes to keep up a respectable appearance to the last, avoiding strong assertions of innocence equally with distinct avowals of guilt. They also try to make capital out of events which, when followed to the end, only make more glaring their mistakes, to use a mild word, of the Commissioners. Thus as to the tender of Higgins and Bloomfield, who declined to carry out the tender and withdrew tlieir deposit. We foolishly thought that a clause could easily have been put into the form of tender, not only requiring a deposit to be made, but also requiring it to be forfeited if a tender was accepted, and the tenderer declined to proceed with the work. But not so \rith our Commissioners. Messrs. Higgins and Bloomfield withdrew their deposit as easily as they withdrew from their tender. Then again £9000 were saved we are exultingly told by both Commissioners and Engineers, through the above gentlemen not going on with the work. The great disappointment and the great delay caused by these gentlemen was a saving of £9000 on the line to Onehunga—less, of course, the- salaries of the chairman, commissioners, engineers, and

:he tribe of assistants of one,grade or another vho had to be paid during the interval be- 1 ;\veen the time when Higgins should {have } jegun, and when the small contract system g vas begun. But in another part we are told } ;hat the first section alone will cost £9000 t nore than the amount named in the tender j ibr it. Where then is the saving? The ( ivhole costs £9000 less, one section costs £9000 more. Take nine from nine and ] aot much will remain. So much for the ( boasted gain or saving of £9000. ■ Commissioners tell us that considerable , delays have been occasioned by the entire f absence of suitable plant. Really we are ( utterly surprised at such childishness. Did £ the Commissioners fancy that there was KOT r an entire absence of railway plant in a country where a railway was never made ? j Everybody but the Commissioners knew there was no plant here, and everybody but the Commissioners knew that railway plant would not spring up in a night like Jonah's gourd. All persons outside the charmed circle knew also that " small contractors" would be the very men who would be the very longest in obtaining the necessary plant. We ourselves strongly warned the Commissioners against trusting to the " small contract system" that was inaugurated with such a flourish of trumpets, but which is now accompanied by the mounful strains of the " Dead March in Saul," rather than the jubilant notes we then heard. But wo wore of course unheeded, it being a special characteristic of the Board to ignore common sense and hug all manner of delusions. Absence of plant indeed ! Did the Commissioners expect railway plant was of indigenous growth, and was as common as ti-treo or the supple-jack P We cannot but agree with Mr. Swanson that a change is imperatively required, and that the Board has been too long tried and been found very wanting indeed. However much we may respect the members individually, we have not an iota of confidence in them as a Railway Board. One word on the report of the Engineers. We have in it constantly given the best possible reasons why this thing and the other has proved disastrous, and we are asked, like Mr. Mark Tapley, to be the more jolly the greater the disasters are which have overtaken our strip of a railway. A foreign woman giving evidence on a trial in London once replied to a question of the cross-examining lawyer, " Do you wish me to publish my own shame ?" The Commissioners and the Engineers have come forward and published reports which do not appear to redound very much to their sagacity and ability. Extra works, for instance, have been "wisely ordered," the tunnel has been lengthened at a cost of £1,200, the sides of the tunnel have to be lined with brickwork contrary to the original intention, but when the rock was found to be jointy and treacherous, this intention had to be altered to a plan which is a very fortunate one for the the contractor, because it adds £4,300 to the cost and his profit on it is very high ! And the account of this is written in such a strain, as if we, the persons who have to pay this extra £4,300, ought in all gratitude to throw up our hats in the air, shout hip hip hurrah, and give three times three for the far-seeing gentlemen who have given us the gratification arising from the knowledge that we are privileged to pay £4,300 more than we had calculated upon We cannot stop, at present, to enter into the joyous excitement which the case of the other "fortunate contractor" ought to cause, who had the happiness to meet with scoria, in which he has found a veritable gold-field for his own exclusive use, though the dust is extracted from us. It is doubtless a source of great congratulation to us that the Commissioners and the small contract system have put a large amount of extra gold into the pockets of these small contractors. But we wish just to point out what might have been done with the £117,000 that it will take, according to the Commissioners' own estimates, to make the railway from Auckland to Onehunga, within a few yards, as far as it goes, of an excellent macadamised road. The cutting of a bush road twelve feet wide would cost about seven shillings a chain. Wages of three pounds a week per man could be made at that rate. Let us say ten shillings a chain, and include in this any necessary bush bridges. 'I his £117,000 then would have cleared 2925 miles op busii iioad ijt the Peoydtce ! But supposing it had been met by say one-third, to take a low estimate, from settlers, then we should have had a sum of £156,000, which would have cut 3900 MILES OF BUSH BOAD AND BRIDGED it ! What a difference would these miles of road have made in developing the resources of this Province ? liow many Waikato and Northern settlers would that money have given partial employment to, and capital to enable them to fight the battle and conquer and subdue the patch of land they had? How much additional agricultural produce would it have caused to be raised and sold in the Province, and so have prevented thousands upon thousands of pounds being sent out of the Province, and thus done something to prevent the present tightness of the money market ? Spent in the way we have indicated it would even now be reproductive. Will any man tell us that making this railway to Onehunga will benefit the Province of Auckland to one thousandth part of the extent which the making of 3900 miles of bush roads would do ? How many blocks of land would then be approachable, how many people might in such a case go and settle on their land? Posterity, says Mr. Newman, will arise up and bless the Railway Comniissioners. The posterity that will do so will be the posterity that benefits by this railway, made at the expense of the other [ portions of the Province, but the posterity of the mass of the people who feel themselves robbed of their just dues by the money spent upon that pet railway will be likely to do anything but bless thein, and the present generation will lead the chorus, or rather have indeed already commenced the opening part. And yet when we are taught so glaringly the folly of Government entering into these railway bubbles, we are invited in another form, to enter into a canal bubble and give a huge monopoly that can he wielded to the disadvantage of countrysettlers by the proposed company if the Provincial Council were weak and foolish enough to grant the monopoly and the 45,000 acres of land. No, the railway has bruised us very considerably, let not the caupl drown us, nor even give us a goed ducking.