THE DESTRUCTOR.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 858, 10 August 1888, Page 12

THE DESTRUCTOR.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES. Sir, —Will yon of your courtesy allow me a few words of reply to and criticism upon your loading article on the Destructor. • You say, “ AVe do hope that the Council will, even at the eleventh hour, make up their minds to carry out the beneficial measure upon which they decided so long ago, and that they will not be deterred from doing so by either ignorant or interested agitation.” Now, Sir, the ignorant and interested agitators are not animated by a senseless dread of a Destructor, but only by a not unnatural anxiety to avoid if possible living in the immediate vicinity of a municipal improvement. This anxiety, arising, as you will no doubt say, in an unreasoning dread of the unknown, would nevertheless seem to be justified and strengthened by the melancholy experience of those past improvements (notably the steam trams) which developed into the unmitigated curse they wc-re to all whose misfortunes compelled them to live near, or in any degree come in contact with, those specimens of the “subtility of devil or man.” . Again, Sir, Melrose is now a borough, and the inevitable result of this will be a development there of “ ignorance and interestedness,” which may culminate in a refusal on the part of the Council of that borough to allow the procession of nightsoil carts from the •city to remain a feature in the landscape to offend the eye and nose of any person who, in his wish to “ view fair Melrose aright,” may chance to “ visit it by pale moonlight. ” Of course when thia comes to pas 3, and it is, I think you will admit, quite within the bounds of human ignorance and interestedneas, there can be no doubt that the City Council, having expended a considerable amount on the Destructor and its appendages .it Clydequay, would, as a matter of economy, go to some other place to erect the necessary apparatus for the disposal of the tribute scorned of Melrose when they could add to the works they will have already established on Clyde-quay at a considerably smaller cost. Trusting that some abler pen than mine will take the matter up, I am, &c,. Frank Moeller.