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Wellington Independent, Issue 3293, 4 September 1871, Page 2

One of the minor and merely departmental results of the policy enunciated last year in the direction of undertaking public works has been the presentation to both Houses of Assembly, during the current session, of an extensive and apparently not yet ended list of papers re I lating to the one subject of railway construction. In these, and in the maps, plans, and columns of calculations by which they are accompanied, there is abundant evidence, not only of the execution of a large amount of departmental work, tut of the awakening of a spirit ! of interest and enterprise in connection with public works throughout all the provincial divisions of the colony. If it , has not been a justifiable complaint, it has been a common one, that this i awakening is due, not so much to the i urgencj or the legitimacy of the undertakings, as to the desire on the part of each community to "share in the spoil," as it ip called — to secure some immediate and local expenditure without regard j to the future or to the general interests ,of the colony. A perusal of tho papers which have thus been presented to the Assembly ought to convince anyone who is not altogether an unbeliever that there is nothing very reckless or extravagant in the demands or the suggestions of the representative bodies with whom rests the suggestion of railway works to be constructed in each province, and the reading of the documents will also illustrate that during the year neither the G-cncral Government nor its servants have been negligent of their duty in accumulating informadon of a, reliable character for the guidance of Parliament. There is, in fact, no more prominent or suggestive feature of the records of the labors of Government during the recess than the j fact of such a mass of information on 1 these subjects having been obtained and embodied in the shape in which it now appears on the table of either House. As the papers which have thus been printed become distributed throughout the country, quotations will no doubt be made from them, as is iv some instances being already done by journals of local circulation, so that there will soon be general familiarity with the number of works proposed, their nature, probable cost, and characteristics in an engineering point of view. One guide to what is proposed or desiderated in the different parts of the country is furnished by the mere resolutions of the several Provincial Councils, and these, with such correspondence as is immediately connected with them, have been published in a separate parliamentary paper which may be said to serve as an index to the numerous papers which have been priuted in connection with the same subject. By this summary of Provincial Council resolutions we learn that the proposal emanating from the province of Auckland is that there should be an extension of the projected railway to Onehunga to the wharf at Geddcs's Point, and that there should be a continuation of tho line from Auckland to Waikato by the valley of tho Waikato to the frontier settlements of the "Waikato Delta. From Hawke's Bay the offer is to set aside such parts of the wasto lands within the province as may be required as provision for the construction of a railway from Napier to Wellington and the West Coast. In Taranaki there does not appear to have been attention given to the matter beyond what is represented in a letter of the Superintendent, based upon a resolution of the Council, in which bis Honor states to Messrs Ross, Hotson, and Co., that, until he has visited Wellington, and conferred with the General Government, he is not in a position to make any arrangements in reference to a proposal of theirs to construct lines of railway and to colonise tho waste lands. Adopting the survey of a main line from Wellington to Patea, the Wellington Council recommend that the following portions should be immediately proceeded with, viz., Wellington to Masterton, "Wanganui to "Wnitotara, and Wunganui to Marton. The Nelson Council's resolutions relate to a railway line from Nelson to Foxhill, from Cobden to the Brunner coal-mine, and from Westport to the Mount Roohfort coalfield. And, going merely by the schedule of the correspondence, we find that the resolutions of the Canterbury Council recommend the " extension of the northern line to the river Waipara, and the southern line from the Rakaia to the river Ashburton, with bridge thereover, and from Temuka to the Orari ; brnnch lines from Kolleston to Southbridge, and from the northern and southern trunk lines respectively, to Malvern Hills and Oxford; and an expenditure of £7,000 voted by the Province for the railway between Timnru and

Temuka." In Otago the recommendation is that the Duuedin and Clutha line be early competed, and that the following additional lines be sanctioned by the Assembly :— lnvercargill to Mataura, Waitaki to Moeraki, thence to Waikouaiti, Tokomairiro to Tuapeka, Mossgiel to Outram, Winton to Kingston, and Balclutha to Mataura. Besides which are recommended a branch line from Papakaio to Greytown, and lines from Waikouaiti to Dunedin, from Tokomairiro to Lawrence, and from Oamaru to Waiareka. Whatever may be the individual merits of the several projects which are thus recommended, it is obvious that the pulse of the country has been touched by the policy of the Government, and that there is a demand, and it is to be hoped no more demand than necessity, for the undertaking of public works calculated to develop, locally and generally, the resources of the Colony. It will remain for the Legislature to decide which are the works which should receive first attention, and to provide for them the ways and means.