Untitled

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 8949, 13 January 1888, Page 4

It is too lata in the day to bemoan the extent to which we hare become involved for the sake of having railways. It is the railway a.ge, and we were carried away by the spirit of the times; bat it 13 impossible to suppress the thought that if the same or half the amount which we hare spent on railways had been spent on roads the settlement of the country would have been in a more satisfactory condition. It is a singular thing that a very similar expert# ence is to be met in nearly every British. colony, and the " Engineer" has devoted an article to the neglect that has been shown where in the colonies in road* construction, whioh has been sacrificed to the rage for railways. It says :—" No course could be moie full of danger to ultimate prosperity. The desire for rail® ways iii certainly natural. No one denies, or could deny, their vast importance in opening ,up districts which can by no other means be rendered available for settlement and cultivation. But aftei all, this importance, great though it be, must in all cases be beld secondary t6 the perfecting of a network of close inter*, communication in districts which are already fully occupied. That our colonists are now becoming alive to the danger of neglect of this principle is made apparent by the numerous complaints appearing in the many issues of our colonial Press. Any colony which spends large sums on its railways, while it neglects the up-keep and development of ordinary roads, adopts a policy so suicidal ths.t ere long the means must be wanting to make its railways pay for the cost of maintenance and working." There may be consolation in knowing that Neiw Zealand is not the only country that has blundered in this way, but, though the " Engineer" does not exactly specify our colony, it exactly expresses the situation, and speaks like a resident. It may be questioned whether there would not have been as much settlement at this hour in the colony if we had never had a railway, save for the money expended and this population that it has brought; bat at all events there is no question that the excessive production of railways, and the great neglect of highways, either as feeders for the railways, or for affording ordinary facilities for communication, have been among the principal causes of the stagnation that has come on the com* pletion or cessation of our public work«. indeed, in the districts tapped by the railways— we speak at least of the Auckland districts—even the residents in the vicinity of the lines cannot kvail themselves very much of this means of sending their principal products to market, and to those settlers a little way removed the luxury is caviare ; while over the vast proportion of the rest of the colony, the district are in a state of nature so far as means of communication are concerned, and by our hunger for railways we have left thousands of honest Bettlers to starve in the want of any kind of communication. What a small proportion of useless railway expenditure would have sufficed to open up tracks and roads of a humble but serviceable kind on our goldfields, and I facilitated prospecting and mining tha' would have done more for the colony than almost all the; railways combined And how many a settlement still languishing, as if in exile from civilisation, would have been stimulated by such highway facilities as might hare been afforded by a tithe of what has been thrown away protitlessly on railways. It will be remembered that when our rail way policy was introduced it was arguec that our railways would be but improved forms; of road. They • have sinco dove» loped many of the pretentious characteristics of. railways, and in themselves, and in the extent to which they have been pushed, they left nothing, or virtuallj nothing, for the more practical work ol opening up the country by highways. And now when experience has taught us, the vrallet is empty, and amy uuch work 16 rolled over on the people themselves to do it or leave it alone. We have, in the words of the " Engineer," become " alive to the danger of the neglect of this pnncipie," but unhappily it is too late. >»e have got the railways, posterity must get the roads. ■ '