CHRISTCHURCH NEWS

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4466, 20 September 1901, Page 6

CHRISTCHURCH NEWS

Special to the “ Times.” CHRISTCHURCH, September 19. The tide cf visitors to the Hanmer Piains has set in this year very early. Ordinarily it is not till October that the visitors, congregate at the sanatorium, but this year all the accommodation has been fairly well Idled from the early part of the present month. Comment was made at the meeting of the Christchurch Prison Hate Mission yesterday on the increasing number of young men who are found in Lyttelton Gaol. It was stated that a largo num her of the prisoners are comparatively young men, who evidently feel less shame in being sent to gaol than was felt in former years. The ‘‘Lyttelton Times” this morning devotes an article to the mail service question, in the course of which it says ; —“lf the San Francisco- service is Auckland’s ewe lamb we have heard the North Island Trunk Railway similarly described. It is at best a young black sheep, and the sooner the colony is rid of it the better. Wellington, Canterbury and Otago will certainly not allow themselves to be thus bounced into accepting an unsatisfactory mail service, and the Government would really strengthen its position by letting the Auckland members go over in a body to Captain Russell. They will get precious little from that quarter. The Postmaster-General has condemned the present service so strongly that he would simply stultify himself by surrendering to the Auckland members now. We have had some examples of parochialism during the past year or two, but this is simply the most outrageous at tempt at log-rolling the colony has knoivn in the decade. If Sir Joseph Ward does bind the colony to a continuance of Mr Spreckels’s contract, the Ministry will assuredly suffer at the polls, for the Southern provinces are heartily sick of the service. The position looks to us like a choice be tween Auckland and the rest of the colony, and if the Southern members are honest and y firm, Auckland will sneedily discover the vanity of such threats as Mr Napier has made.”