The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1868.

Westport Times, Volume II, Issue 171, 17 February 1868, Page 2

The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1868.

The necessity of local self-government is forced upon us from day to-day by some object of interest to the community. In an article of Saturday we alluded to the steps that had been taken by the Nelson Government for the protection of the river bank. It seems that these efforts have not met with the approbation of scientific men, and yet the works are being persevered in. Probably it would be a wiser policy to stop them ere further expense is incurred and submit the plan to the opinion of a thoroughly competent engineer. We do not mean to disparage the plan at present adopted, but we think that it will not answer the required end. In all works that have been erected to prevent the encroachments of a river or the sea, it has found the more substantial the resisting power the gr >ater has been the permanence, and in the end the lesser has been the expense. The best that can be said of the works at present in course of erection, its that they are temporary —calculated perhaps, to stand one or two floods and then to be washed away, and the work will require to be done over again. If we had . local self-government, we don't think this would have been the plan adopted, for local governments object to be continually putting their hands in their pockets over and over again for the same object. With every yard of ground washed away, so much property is destroyed of more or less value, and as the river bears an evident tendency to wash away the north bank, some steps should be at once taken to prevent it extending its ravages.