THE COLONIST.

Colonist, Volume XII, Issue 1170, 11 December 1868, Page 3

THE COLONIST.

NELSON, ERIDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1868,

THE COLLAPSE OP THE PANAMA MAIL

EOUTE,

When writing the article which appeared in our last Summary respecting the position of the Panama, New Zealand, and Australian Royal Mail Steam Navigation Company, we did not suppose that the crms in its affairs had actually arrived ; although the ' conjecture was inevitable that that crisis was ' approaching, and could not long bo deferred. A telegram received on Monday night from Wellington, shows that it has come. The Rakaia brought the intelligence from Sydney that the Mataura had been seized in that port. This is all our correspondent announces; but we have since learned, through a passenger, that it wus intended to seize the Mataura at Panama, to which port, a gentleman, representing some of the English creditors of the Company, had arrived for the purpose of attaching the ship under a mortgage we believe to the Royal Mail Company. It whs resolved, however, for the sake of the passengers and the traffic generally, that the vessel should be permitted to go on to New Zealand and Sydney, where the attachment could be made, as has been done. So this, we presume, is the beginning of the end of the too enterprising and oversanguine Panama Company, which begin, we feor, in advance of the time, and undertook a project which neither social nor commercial prudence could recog- I nise as sound. I

In our remarks in our issue of last Friday we wrote on the assumption that in negotiations, respecting the amount of subsidy that New Zealand would have to pay for the Suez route, such negotiations would require to be entered into with the Peninsular and Oriental Company. We find thutsuioh arrangements must be made through the Imperial Government; and this in our opinion makes the case more simple and easy ; for, in the present circura«tances of the Colony, the Home Government will, we bplieve, not exact heavy terms, and therefore the £20,000 per annum formerly paid by New Zealand, would no doubt be found amply sufficient. From lute Australian telegrams it appears that the steam mail route between Australia and England, by way of the Cape of Grood Hope, is taking practical shape. A Prospectus has been issued of a cornpauy "with a capital of £600,000, one fifth of which it is proposed shall be taken up by the Colonies, and the remainder by Great Britain.

The foregoing remarks were in type and intended for publication in our last issue. Since then, later telegrams inform us that the Company has practically stopped. The E'ikaia is the last boat which the Company will be permitted to send from Wellington to Panama. The Claud Hamilton and the Auckland are sold, and the Lord Ashley is about to be. It is a collapse.

We have no space to-day to enter fully into the state of the case as respects our postal service ; but if the Panama Company are wise for themselves, they will return to the status quo ante, and content themselves with being the Inter-Colonial Eoyal Mail Company. If they do that, they may succeed in a quiet unpretending course of business; if not, then the New Zealand Company will, we hope, be resuscitated for the sake of the Colony ; for it would not be wise to depend merely on Australia for the conveyance of our mails, and to pay subsidies, however moderate, the bulk of which would be spent out of the Colony, and the Colony by so much be impoverished. We shall return to this subject on an early day.