DUNEDIN, SATURDAY, AUGUST 25.

Otago Witness, Issue 1343, 25 August 1877, Page 14

DUNEDIN, SATURDAY, AUGUST 25.

' No'subject, perhaps, is of more supreme interest to the settlers up-country than • the question of the new District Railway Bill. Railway making is one of tlxoso things in which it is quite impossible to stop. If a line be made as far as Blairtaieri it must go to Clyde, or else Clyde' is relatively to Naseby in a worse position than it was ; and if it , goes to Clyde it must go to Cromwell, for- the same reason. There is no stopping about these things. Consequently ./the up-country districts have an over- ! whelming interest in this new Railway Bill, because it' provides the only means by which they can now —hope to gee.the benefits. of railway - communication extended to them. : The provisions, however, of the measure now submitted to the Assembly are not ?> each as to give any district much, hope of getting its summum bonum in the shape of the iron torse. We may prer game that the answer given by Ministers to all applications for branch lines during the session will be that they can r be constructed by private persons under . the provisions of the District Railway Bill. Now, we approve of the " general principle of the measure, it .will be seen at once to be open to the difficulties that were found so very • great in the sister Colony of Tasmania. There the railway riots were, to a large extent, caused by the fact that the inhabitantsof onepartof the island thought 'they suffered from a patent injustice when they had to make up a deficit on railway earnings by local rates, while their neighbours in another part rested securely on the Consolidated Fund without having to tax themselves at all. Will it hot seem hard, ou the Clyde people that in time to come they should have to impose a local rate, while the. Outram people, whose jailway is riot remunerative, have no local -rate- to pay? -It is-true they will -be able .to comfort themselves, with the recollection that they got rid of Provincialism, and gave their .beloved Pyke an income annually. This, however, will lose its soothing effect after a little, and when they have to pay we ' can almost imagine the people of Cl/de beginning to be - sorry that their line — was not constructed under the Provincial regime as was that of Outram, and then they would have had nothing to pay at j all. This is one difficulty that we , see looming up in<tbe future. It may not, indeed, prevent County Councils giving ' their assent, but when the time comes for paying the money there will certainly be an outcry over the difference between two neighbouring localities, as there was in Tasmania. The whole - principle of the Bill, be it understood, is this : that every County working under this Act will ' have to give a guaranteed interest to shareholders in the line to the extent of five per cent. . . on their outlay. We ' are regarding the question of working under thin mi Bill from the standpoint of the Coun,,tieß themselves. We very much - question' whether they will ever have ' the. opportunity of working under the , Act, because we do not think that sufficient' inducement is offered to capitalists to invest their money. The proviso that the Government shall ' have 'power at; any time to purchase the line by arbitration, adding 10 per cent, to the sum arrived at, seems to . us a sufficient barrier to any capitalist investing in so precarious a property. ' Unless 'something like a sufficient tenure is given to shareholders, no man • in bis senses will put his money into the. concern, Seven per cent., is not a very high rate of interest for a Colonial security,* eiid the prospect f of having their money returned on their hands ! at any. time when a Government, may choose" ; to I ;.', buy, will effectually prevent foreign f capital being spent on our branch lines. This is, of; course, one, of those matters of detail that may be well altered in Committee, without interfering in any way with the rest of the measure. We are afraid, on the whole, that the Bill will prove a disappointing one to those outlying districts- which are looking forward' eagerly to the • time when they may -' have' railway communication with the .coast. The opportunity is given to them to tax, themselves, but this is the only real benefit. . It would be a sort of poetic justice if Clyde, which re- •• turned an Abolition member last year that the first great gain ahe reaped from Abolition was the un- . desirable enjoyment of taxing herself for that which other districts got out of the Provincial chest. Everyone would agree. that it served her right; but we do not 'care to deal with State

questions in a spirit of revenge. We only hope that "Clyde may get her line. It it quite clear that we had beat let bygones be bygone 3, and look to the future — not the past. We cannot help fancying, however, that this District Railway Bill is a something of a dummy, and that its main purpose is to afford to Ministers a convenieat means of putting off applicants for Government lines. Orepuki, the Waitaki valley, the Strathtaieri, -and so on, will be told that if all their calculations are so good, and the prospect of the lines they want so very bright, they had much better make them themselves, and not go to the Ministry of the day. The answer sounds so well — on the face of it, it meets the whole case. \Ve have noticed, however, that between a calculation meant for the eye of a ~ Gove rnm ent, and one meant for private speculators, there is often a great "deal of difference. In that; difference of calculation, we are| much, afraid, lies the break clown of the branch line system.