The Southland Times. PUBLISHED DAILY. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8.

Southland Times, Issue 3319, 8 February 1879, Page 2

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED DAILY. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8.

The art of finessing Has been brought to a rare pitch of perfection now-a-days, ■; and^l^s became spJnterwoven with ; the practice of politics .as to appear part of the substance of -the original, and quite iii its placed - ; Everybody finesses, more or less. The public jnan seeking fora place for ,%relatiy;e or dependent finesses for it. Representatives to serve the interests of their 7 constituents in ■ Parliament finesse, and finesse is, in fact, apparent in most of the affairs of everyday life. We detect it even in the Government Gazette, v for, to us the new tariff of railway, charges for the conveyance of agricultural produce savors strongly ; of finesse, ; and seems to have been cbmpiledUn the interests of certain ports of the cplqnyi Confining our remarks to. therMiddlelslandj. we may instance Dunedin- and Lyttelton as the places most favored by the new tariff, or rather Class E of the, new tariff, which deals. specially with produce. The scale j chargeshavebeen fixed on a sliding scale that ft governed by distance. For fifty: niiles and under is 2^d per ton per mile, and,, for more .than, fifty and not more that seventy-five miles l^dper ton, and for a greater distance than that Id per ton : per mile. ' From this it is clear that all places within ; a radius of fifty miles are placed upon an equal footing as regards cost of carriage, but when it comes to a greater distance irregularity becomes apparent, and also a deliberate system; ; of handicapping in favor of .the principal markets, and ports of export. For instance, a producer may be situated fifty miles fi'om Oamara and one hundred from Dunedin; The former is;the nearest port, and the one to which he would natui-ally gravitate if there were no special inducements to influence him. Now the tariff provides special 'inducement. it 'says— -Why go to Oamaru,: when tlie. cost ..of carriage to Dunedin is cheaper ? If you send produce to Oamaru it will cost 9s 5d per ton,' and dhly 8s M. if' sent tp Dunedin. So, ifthe place of production is seventyfive' miles distant from what we will term the nearest local port struggling to hold its own against more powerful rivals, eight shillings and eleven pence half-penny would be the cost of conveying thither a ton .of produce, whilst the same money would; cover the. cost per ton for a distance of 107 miles, thus offering direct inducement to the producer to send the greater distance to the larger ■■'of populatidnLandT trade", ;to; the decided detriment of the less important outlet of exportation that happens to be within the charmed radius ot seventyfive, miles. But the tremendous handicapping of markets and places of export within a radiusof fifty miles, and which are - contending with markets and places of export outside of that radius, is particularly vapparaitj ancH intimately affects Buch place's -as Oamaru .and Timaru, placing both almost at the mercy of Dunedin and Ghristchurch. ••■-. And not only--Oamaru and Timara are affected, but places very much farther afield. The tendency of the tariff is to drain the gTeater part 6f the traffic of the Canterbury and Otago districts and not a small portion of the traffic of the Southland district to Dunedin and Christchurch. ■We will take the case of produce to be dispatched from Gore to a port of shipment. Gfore is exactly 100 miles from . Dunedin by rail, and sixty miles from the Bluff, and therefore -the cost per ton to send to Dunedin iswithin tenp'ence.a ton as cheap as to send to the Bluff, one hundred miles at a penny being 8s 4d, and sixty miles at one penny halfpenny, 7s 6d. As for Invercargill, its relative position with Gore and' 'Dunedin is exactly equal, 8s 4d per ton being, the cost of carriage from Gore to each of the two places, v We, thinkvthe, above facts conclusively demonstrate the exceeding, unfairness of the existing railway tariff for the carriage of agricultural produce. The inclination is clearly to takeYrom those who have little and give to' those who have much. r.One of the most forbidding features ■ of centralisation is exhibited in this, and it will be markedly the interest of all who are likely to be influenced, adversely by such finessing to make a resolute stand against it. Moreover, chai'ges are, in the first place, excessive, and in the second, monstrously inequitable.' ' Excepting | for.- the • reasons we have above adyanced, why, we should like to know,' I is the carnage of produce ior the distance | of fifty miles more than dpuble thst of one hundred miles? It is not so in the other colonies. In. "Victoria, for instance,.

the difference in the cost for long and short distances is exceedingly .trifling, only one farthing' per ton per mile, but then in Victoria there is h not a variety of interests to serve ; Melbourne, is the > port, - and whether the railway tarifffis -light or heavy the "great bulk , of the country's produce must gravitate to it. "We daresay ourfriends there would prove -as apt' at finessing as New Zealanders ' if occasion demanded, but that so far as mere carriage of produce is\ concerned ! the Victorian rates' are found to be suitable is quite -.condemnatory of the tariff j in force here. A little leas for the longer distances is all very well, but when the charge between fifty and one hundred miles is more than doubled it is time to investigate motives. Those that we have addiiced are- sinister -enough, and we hope will attract attention and lead to reform in a 'direction "where it is very much required. -Indeed the entire railway" tariff would be none the worse for carefuLrevision. K will be a subject for the consideration of hon. members when Parliament meets again, unless some modification is effected meantime.