FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1861.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 7, 22 November 1861, Page 2

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1861.

Human nature is the same in all ages, and in all places; the present is but the repetition of the past.: shift the Kaleidescope as we will, we view the same elements under a different form. The Hebrews of thirty-two centuries past, who had to deliver the usual tale of bricks while no straw was given, are not without a parallel in the present day; hard taskmasters as they had, we shall not find much difficulty in matching them amongst the ruling powers' that exist. It was said of the first Napoleon, that one of his generals remon-

strating against the execution of some order on the score of its impossibilitj^, he replied that there was no such word as impossibility in the French language. Our General Go-

vernment appears to cumulate the Pharaohs of the past, and to be enrolled as disciples of the Napoleonic school. With a liberality which augured great things for the future, they invested the Superintendent of this Province, and his successors in office, with a considerable grant of land adjacent to the town, between high and low water mark, in order that it might be reclaimed, and might afFord funds for the improvement of the harbour, and for the benefit of the commerce of the Port and town of Dunedin. Visions of commercial greatness, docks, wharves, commodious anchorages, spontaneously arose, and some whose fervid imagination outran all calculation descried in the distance a heavily-armed frigate reposing at its ease within a stone's throw of the present jetty, while others, whose thoughts instinctively assumed a practical form, rejoiced in anticipation of many an acre, nowexposed at low water and" emitting a noxious effluvia, being permanent^ occupied as the busy haunts of men. So general was the enthusiasm that even that staid body the Provincial Executive —whose movements we all so much admire—caught time by the forelock, and (at least so it is told us) applied two months ago for powers akin to those granted to the cities of Auckland and Wellington, having similar endowments. But instead of the acquiescence they expected, and without which it was impossible to do the work effectually, they received a string of questions to answer, requiring careful consideration, and that within the period of four hours, —the Government offices opening at 10 o'clock a.re., and the northern mail closing at 2 p.m. Of course these questions, along with many other important letters, remained unanswered. When next mail goes, the answers can be dispatched, two mails more will then bring an answer, and in fact the correspondence j may endure any length of time. Meanwhile the ground remains unredeemed and unleased, and instead of fetching the price it would if offered at the present time, the demand that exists will be partly satisfied, and the land realize a less price. The questions asked by the General Government are vexatious and obstructive; no apparent reason exists for them ; they relate to the value of the land, the mode in which payment, of tne loan is proposed to be secured, the source whence payment is to be drawn, and so on. The answer to these questions is simply that the money proposed to be expended on the harbour is to be borrowed on the security of the land alone, the sale of the leases of which will be the means of reimbursement. In fact, the whole of the matters to which the letter refers are simply details, and the letter itself is transparently only an excuse for throwing difficulties in the wa}>" of the Provincial Government, in carrying out an improvement in which the iuterests of the Province are largely concerned.

We hear that the tendencies of the General Government are of a decidedly sceptical nature, strongly tinctured with the doctrines of the German School. They utterly repudiate the axiom "ex nilulo nihil fi.tr We on the contrary hold to the good old orthodox faith that means are necessary to the end ;, and as an example, we would adduce the necessity of the Governor, or a Lieutenant-Governor, being permanently settled here, or within a few hours of us. While the seat of authority is at the other end of the colony, we may truly say that " the heart is not in the right place." With a population educated to obey the first impulse —to-day here, in thousands, and tomorrow there, with neighbouring populations on the Australian Continent equally susceptible, it is absolutely necessary • that the Government be armed with powers equal to any emergency which might arise from the existence of large bodies of men without employment, and a Government without the means of employing them. It would be a small consolation to the good folks at heme to learn that while Rome was burning a Nero fiddled; or in other words, while one of the finest Provinces owning allegiance to her Majesty was helpless from neglect, her rebellious subjects in' the North, stained with the blood of her children and gorged with their property, were honied into a silken silence not unlike the posture of the Tiger, ready for a future spring at a more propitious moment.

While the seat of authority

The lightermen of this port are pretty much in a similar position to an unfortunate child, who, after having been corrected for a fault, is punished afresh for crying. By the jetty regulations, a certain time, four days, we believe, is allowed for the lighters to discharge their cargo, after which time has elapsed, a fine of so much per ton is levied for every day they remain undischarged. One would" suppose from this that the blnrae attached to any long delay was occasioned by the dilatoriness of the boatmen, and that any fine they rendered themselves liable to was incurred by their own fault. But it is manifestly unjust that these penalties should be enforced when in nine cases out often the detention is caused by the utter want of proper-facilities for landing the cargoes. It is a matter of sore and general complaint upon the part of the lightermen that they should, from the want of proper accommodation, be frequently detained, in some cases a week or more over the stipulated time, and then mulcted in heavy fines for this compulsory detention. Nor does the evil of this unsatisfactory state of things end here; to the merchant this delay is much more serious, for in how many cases has the profit-

able sale of goods been prevented by the inability to land, them ? There are many articles of commerce, the price of which is liable to continual .fluctuations, and it may happen that severe loss may be entailed upon a merchant by the detention of his goods for even a few days in a falling market. To our Australian friends the supineness on the p*art of the authorities in providing proper accommodation for the increased amount of traffic, is a matter of astonishment —and hearty and many are the maledictions they shower on the devoted heads of the powers that be. They cannot but contrast our arrangements with the energetic and spirited efforts that are made in every considerable port in the sister colony,, for the better dispatch of public business. -Two months ago, when the first rush from Victoria clearly showed the utter inadequacy of our accommodation for any sudden increase of traffic, it might have been somewhat premature, considering the uncertainty of the permanency of our Gold Fields, to incur any large expenditure of public money—but now-that this uncertainty is removed, and there is every probability of our trade increasing in a still greater ratio than it has already done, no time should be wasted, and we have no doubt whatever that if the matter were taken in hand at once, a new jetty might be constructed in three or four months. We* have the timber for piles almost at our doors, and abundance of labour in our streets." In the name of the whole mercantile community one would tell the authorities, with whom rests the remedy for this public inconvenience, in the language of the London policeman, to "move on." —they are obstructing the thoroughfares of commerce, and would ask them to profit by the example of the energy and enterprise of our Australian friends, of which we have so many recent and eminent evidences in our own town, and we would bid them keep pace with the march of the times in which they

live.