Page 4 Advertisements Column 2

Star (Christchurch), Issue 624, 23 May 1870, Page 4

NEW ADVERTISEMENTS. Mr Williams demurs to this charge, and declares that his interpretation is perfectly correct. Without venturing to give a decided opinion upon the merits of the dis-j pute, it certainly appears to us that the proprietors of the wharf have been somewhat scurvtly treated by the Government. Without going back to old days to consider whether the erection of the wharf was not, in the first instance, a decided boon to the public, we may reasonably assume that the owners were more or less damnified by having the approaches to their wharf cut off by the railway. We suppose we may also assume that the Government considered it for the public interest to compound for this damage by connecting the wharf with the railway. By doing this, the Government probably thought to recompense the owners, and, at the same time, render the wharf again available for the public service. The agreement, as it stands, appears to have been drawn up with special reference to the import trade only, as if the Government had been pressed to enter into an arrangement with the owners with the view of facilitating the urgent wants of importers. With regard to this branch of trade, there is a clear intention on the part of the Government to allow the owners a fair remuneration for the use of their property, as the separate rates for haulage and wharfage are distinctly defined. This being so, the question naturally arises, why should the Government afterwards make an exception in the case of the export trade, especially that of grain ? In admitting the wharfingers to share in the railway traffic, partly as a recompense for loss of frontage and partly for the public convenience, it seems to us that it must have been intended to allow them to share in the export as well as the import trade. The Government may have bad law on their side in subsequently refusing to charge wharfage on grain, and so depriving the owners of Peacock's wharf of any share in that trade, but we very much doubt whether they have equity. Mr Wynu Williams may point triumphantly to his interpretation of the agreement, but to us it smacks far tod much of smartness to be creditable either to himself or his colleagues. If the Government intended to open up Peacock's wharf again for public use, they surely did not expect to get the use of it for nothing. They appear to have sought to make use of it for the import trade when it suited their own convenience, and to have adopted a smart dodge to deprive the owners of any share in the profits of the export grain trade when they no longer required the use of the wharf. We cannot help thinking that such acts are unworthy of a Government, which ought always to remember that public savings effected at the expense of private enterprise are, in the end, no savings at all. But there is another and perhaps more important reason why Mr Wynn Williams' letter is sure to attract a somewhat unenviable notoriety. Mr Wynn Williams has taken advantage of the occasion to make a direct appeal to the electors of Papanui, and so try to influence their choice of a candidate. Mr Peacock is held up to the electors as one whose sole object in seeking their suffrages is to look after his own selfish interests, and the public are warned that if they elect him, they will certainly have to pay an increased rate on the export of their grain. We cannot too strongly deprecate this sort of behaviour on the part of members of the Government. During the course of the present elections, Mr Wynn Williams has already sinned more than once in this direction. He has more than once made use of his position as a member of the Government to influence the decision of the elector c. We have refrained from interference hitherto, because his previous offences have had reference to his own election. His address to the Papanui electors is another sort of affair altogether, and is not to be tolerated for an instant. Ever since the Papanui contest began it has been matter of public comment that the Government have betrayed an unusual interest in the result. Blatant, noisy stump