INTERROGATORIES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 423, 20 March 1880, Page 18

INTERROGATORIES.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW ZEALAND MAIL.

Sir, —As important questions for the Royal Commission on railway communication to ask as any yet mooted, are : Who were the first purchasers of the lands around Buiinythorpe and Woodville ? Were they high in office in the Kail way Department ? Did they use their official knowledge as to the proposed course of the railway in purchasing that land before it was publicly known that the railway was likely to go that way ?■""•' Did they not sell to the present owners with a pledge that the railway should go that w*y, and that the junction should be at Buunythorpe ? Are they not now using their official influence, from interested motives, in persuading the Government to make that line in preference to the West Coast line ? Have they not thrown every obstacle in the way of the West Coast line being made, until Climie and Gwynneth, civil engineers, demonstrated to the Government that a good line could be got to the West Coast ? Who are the owners of the land around Fitzherbert, and are they not interested in getting the West Coast Railway—if made—taken through Fitzherbert to Palmerston, instead of through Poxton to Greathead ? and will not the railway be 20 miles longer to Wanganui if taken by the former route instead of by the latter ? If these matters are properly enquired into, the reasons for the opposition of the Railway Department to the Wel-lington-Foxton Railway will be easily found.— I am, &c., Observer.