COUNTY COUNCIL V. ROAD BOARDS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XIV, Issue 4898, 25 June 1887, Page 2

COUNTY COUNCIL V. ROAD BOARDS

Sir,— ln reply to " Inquirer's " queiy as to whether County Councils receive aubsidy on rates they collect, I may state they do not. The Act as at 6rst drafted, if I remember risjht, gave all the subsidy to Road Boards on the rates they collected, as I remember Sir Julius Vogel'a | words, " That he looked upon the Road Boards as the pioneers of settlement," but someone got the clauso altered so as to give half the subsidy to County Councils. The report on Road Board finance as issued by the Special Finance Committee of tlie Council is entirely unroliable. Two errors were exposed in the Herald by the Clerks of the Patutahi and Waikohu Boards. In one case the I charges were put down at £120 instead of i £0G ; the other £69 instead of, I think, | £30. The other Boards may have been [ equally misrepresented. This document as issued bears no signature. It is usual for the Chairmen of Councils to sign on behalf of the rest, but clearly it appears to be "nobody's child," as each one declines to father it, whether from its being something of a monstrosity, or so entirely Maunchausen that its claim as a relative were something to be avoided. The document deals entirely with the past, and like the late Financial Statement of Sir Julius' "if the people would only have drunk more whisky and eaten more tapioca and the like, I should have had a surplus," and if the Road Boards had swallow d the goods things provided by the County Council the County would have gained, but here, as in the whisky, the people did not see it, henco all this hubble-bubble and the attempt to discredit Road Boards. Had the Special Finance Committee asked the Road Board clerks to assist them, a reliable statement might have been arrived at, but now any value the report might have had as a State document is for ever lost. What would be really interesting to the ratepayers is something about this year's works, and if the County Clerk would devote the same amount of ability in drawing up a prospectus of the ways and means available as he did in drawing up the manifesto those Road Boards who may be at a loss what to do for the best would at once see what amount the Council would have for their district roads, provided they decided to merge. I fear this document will take a good deal of hauling at before it comes, and may even then bo very disappointing.

Ratepayer.

In the course of his speech in the House on the recent tariff debate, Mr Garrick, M.H.R, said: "One more illustration, i as bearing on the effect of protection on labor. I have a nephew who served his time in the Government workshops in Christchurch for seven years. He was an able mechanic, and could manufacture or do anything about an engine, and, besides that, was a very good draughtsman. He was discharged from the Government service, and went to America to try bis fortune there. I have seen a letter from him, in which he says that, instead of working eight hours a-day as in Christchurch, he has to work ten, and with that his wages are only £1 12s a-week ; and the only way in which he had been able to obtain employment there at all was through powerful influence from here used with persons resident on the spot. He says to me : ' Talk of Christchurch and the unemployed there, it is nothing to what it is here ; the number of unemployed here is something tremendous. There are fifty thousand now out of employment, and a large number in Philadelphia alone. I shall take the earliest opportunity of getting back to Christchurch. 1 So much for the effects of protection upon the facts of life. The Dunedin Herald, the special organ of Sir Julius Yogel and the Ministry, thus commences a leading article :—" Now that the ' crucial ' time is approaching, the advocates of protection must be putting on their armour and prepare to do battle valiantly in the cause."

At the B-illarat police court recently foui very young children werebrought up almost naked and starving. Their mother was in gaol and the father had left his home. The children who were bo and weak that they could hardly stand in court, were Bent to an industrial school. Two ProesaiTs of the Sydney University gat salaries of £1500 each. A statue of the Queen has been ordered for the pedestal in King-street, Sydney, Its price is to be £3,000.