The New Zealand Herald. AUCKLAND, SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1867.

New Zealand Herald, Volume IV, Issue 1077, 27 April 1867, Page 5

The New Zealand Herald.

AUCKLAND, SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1867.

SPECTESIUE AGENDO. "Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice : Tais each man's censure, bat reserve thy judgment This aiove all,—To thine own self be true And it must follow, aa the nii»ht the day, U:C3 uinit act then te false to any man."

Agaix the steamer from Wellington that should have brought our portion of the Panama mail has arrived in Auckland, but without the mail, and with the intelligence that up to the date of departure, the 24th instaur, there was no sign at Port .Nicholson of the arrival of the Panama mail steamer. Month after month this irregularity takes place, and if varied at all, is varied by sueh au event as that of last month, when the January mail via Panama actually arrived in Wellington twenty-two days behind time, and we, in Auckland, did not receive our English letters in time to reply to them even by the supplementary Suez mail which leaves Auckland on the 11th of the month! This is a state of things which no commercial community will continue to puv up with. There must be a radical reform in the matter of the mail service, and the Government must be plainly told both by the Assembly in session, and by the people out of doors, that the country will no longer submit to be played with in the matter, as they have been since the establishment of the Panama mail service.

"What renders the non-arrival of the Fauatna mail the more vexatious to the colonists of A" ew Zealand is the fact, that nearly the whole of the mail is by the arrangement of the Colonial Government kept back from the Suez boat and forwarded " per force " we might almost say, by the Panama route. Thus, the letters and papers which we received by the Suez mail on the 23rd instant, via Sydney, comprise only a very small portion of the February mail, the remainder, fully three-fourths, we must be content to wait for until the Panama boat shall have made its appearance in Wellington and our portion of the mail shall have been forwarded on to Auckland—certainly not before the sth proximo, and even, perhaps, not then. Whilst the delay in the arrival of the Panama mail at Wellington was confined to the first two or three trips, the public were wihing, before utterly condemning the service, to wait and see if the company would not correct the evil and get their boats into decent working order. We were willing to make all possible allowance then, though we foresaw and pointed out that the delay would be more than temporary, inasmuch as the cause of it was the utter impracticability of, the route in a nautical point of view. We showed that the relative comparison between time and distance between Panama and Cook's Straits (on the westward course at least; that is, from Panama to Cook's Straits) eould not be computed by the ordinary scale of calculation. Results have verified our repeated warnings and assurances ou this subject, and wo, malic bold to say that until larger boats and these, too, more powerful in proportion by one half than those already on the line be placed between Panama and Wellington, the Panama mail boatwill, iu r<ine instances out of ten, bo from three to fourteen days behind her time in reaching Cook Straits. iS r 6W South Wales, we should imagine, must be by this time becoming convinced of this. She will' soon have to take it as a fact beyond dispute. Its demonstration is a mere matter of time. Of what use, then, is the Panama service to this colony or to any of the other Australian colonies? If we had it at a gift, and were forced into using it as wc are now, it would be worse tha°t useless • but when it is remembered that this service costs New Zealand £55,000 per annum, and a similar sum to New South Wales, it becomes intolerable to either colony. The one colony has as much need as the other economise every penny of its income, and much mistake the temper of the colonists i they will submit to the continuance of so one-sided a bargain—the New Zealanders, u t a policy of centralisation uiav be earned out at the cost of the provinces. a»'i the people of New South AVales, that iev may be drawn in, for a supposed bencnr, (winch can be but a very slight one, if ™y) to pay one-halt the cost of carrvin"- out iwV'T" 1 , sc, ' vicc > bufc rea! 'y a "piece of rm political strategy. r,,,' C Conference, we may fairly doubted IS , k ° n 1 U 1 ) - V ictoria will, unoiiotedly, have nothing to do with it. Had

, the terminus ot the proposed routes—namely, y Torres Straits, Panama, and Suez, been Jixect at Melbourne, she would have been «l iug to have taken her share of the con■JJp, It would have been worth u o to have borne the share of the su si y to have profited by the expenditure ill the colony, which woiihl have followed io fixing of the terminus there; but when Tills temptation to support the Torres and i ;vnama routes was withdrawn, when all moi '' VG of self-interest was eliminated from the matter, then Victoria viewed the question solely in the light of getting the best postal service, at the least possible cost. Arguing thus, her Legislative Council at once de" clares, by resolution, —" That very little ad- " vantage will accrue to Victoria from the

"'line ol communication via Panama, or from that via Torres -traits, and that it is not " desirable to subsidise either of those lines " at present," and proceeds at once to the discussion of the practicability of securing a fortnightly mail via Suez. Prom the speech of Mr. Jenner, who moved the following resolution, in the Legislative Council of ' Victoria on the 11th instant, viz.:—"That, in the opinion " of this House, the agreement entered into by the delegates at the Postal Conference " is not satisfactory, or calculated to ad- " vance the interests of this colony,"—and to which the previous quotation was added as an amendment, and the whole adopted—wo learn the following important fact: —" The " establishment of a fortnightly mail service " via King George's Sound and Suez was of " the utmost, importance, and there could " be no doubt that this was the best route. " The Peninsular aud Oriental Company " had offered to give us a fortnightly mail " for £ 170,000 a-year, and the home Goli vemment were prepared to pay one-half, " leaving ;655,000 to bo paid by the " colonies." "What would be the best postal service, and the cheapest for Victoria, -would also be the best for this colony. "What would bo the liability of £ 53,000 per annum, divided amougst all the Australian colonies, or any three of them, compared with the cost of the, present mail services ! — more particularly when the fortnightly service via Suez would be more efficient, more convenient to all than the present or proposed services ! How much better would the interests of New Zealand, for instance, be served by contributing her share of the £55,000 for a fortnightly service via Suez, than to continue leaning on such a broken but costly reed as the service by way of Panama ! Otago, which has a mail steamer direct from Melbourne is the best served province in this colony as regards the mail service, and this with only a montlily mail via Suez. If, however, there were a fortnightly instead of a monthly mail she would be incomparably better oil' than Wellington itself, even if the Panama boat arrived in time. But Mauakau is but

109 miles more distant from Melbourne than is Duuedin, and it would be as practicable with a steamer direct between Melbourne and Manakau, for this Province to be as well served as is Otago. Why then, if we can be better and cheaply served by join ing Victoria m a service via Suez, should we supplement such service by a less advantageous one, at a further cost of £55.000 per annum ? The act is not one merely of folly, but, in the present financial condition of "the colony, one of wilful and ilagitious waste. It- is really spending so much money (that can be obtained only by excessive taxation) not on a postal service, but on a political policy.

It may be thought that having entered into a contract with Panama Royal Mail Company for the Panama Mail service, for a term of years, it is useless to discuss the matter, and that as we must pay for thu service, we had better make the best of it. It is not so, however. The Company has fairly broken its contract by the non-fulfil-ment of the duties it undertook. It has proved itself utterly incompetent for the undertaking, and we maintain that, not only in law but that in equity, the Colonial Government is warranted in setting the contract aside as no longer binding upon it. It is clearly to the interest of the colony that it should do, and in the coining session of the Assembly this aspect of the question will be forced upon the attention of the Ministry. Even if, in addition to the cost- of what would undoubtedly be the best service for the entire colony of New Zealand— that of a fortnightly one by Suez, we could afford to pay another £55,000 per annum— we do not see by what right the colony should bo called upon to pay a sum equal to the revenue of the Stamp Act for the continuance of a service which, instead of being a benefit, has become a loss and a positive nuisance to the people of > cw Zealand ?