Fair Play SATURDAY FEBRUARY 17, 1894. The Midland Railway.

Fair Play, Volume I, Issue 16, 17 February 1894, Page 12

Fair Play SATURDAY FEBRUARY 17, 1894. The Midland Railway.

The Canterbury people ought to be tossing their caps in the air, shouting themselves into a state of exceeding hoarseness over the very satisfactory bit of news which has come to hand concerning the Midland Railway. A few years ago there would have been high jinks and riotous jollification in the city of the Plains, Cathedral Square, would have witnessed a mass meeting addressed by the stentorian voiced Matson, the great Matson, who declared on a memorable occasion that Canterbury must have the line or bust; there would have been torch-light processions and much drinking of whiskey to celebrate the good news that at last there was something distinctly resembling a chance of the line being completed sometime before Prohibition comes into force, or such like milennium-like period. But “ hope deferred maketh the heart sick,” and the heart of Canterbury has so long been sick on the Midland Railway subject that its enthusiasm now-a-days is apt to be of a very mild stamp, tempered indeed with considerable scepticism as to whether the good news really can be true. The history of the Midland Railway Company is one of mistakes and muddles beyond number, of political jobbery and corruption, of greediness and grab, and of disappointments which seemed to be without end. In the first place the colony ought never to have allowed an English, or any other syndicate, to undertake the construction of the line. If the line were needed, which in itself is still a very problematical matter, it should have been constructed by the colony. For the initial mistake of making a very bad bargain for the colony, Sir Robert Stout and Sir Julius Vogel were primarily responsible, and if the Dunedin Knight lives until he is a

hundred, years old he "mil always have to meet the charge of having parted with an immense area of the land of the colony to a foreign syndicate. Of this fact, Sir George Grey loves to remind him, and should the Auckland Knight find his way down to Wellington next session he is bound to give Sir Bobert a very had quarter of an hour on the old grievance. After the bargain bad been made, it was found that good as it was for the Company the latter could not complete it. They had not the cash they represented themselves as having, and the works once begun were carried on in a halfhearted sort of way which bespoke lack of capital, and which if persisted in would have resulted perhaps in the completion of the line somewhere about the year 4000. Then came months, even years, of weary squabbling between the 'Government and the Company, of negotiations which never came to anything beyond inspired newspaper paragraphs —of as accurate a character as most paragraphs- of a like nature—and a shady flow of unending and unavailing jaw in the House. Finally Bichard the Fourth took the matter in hand, in conjunction with a representative of the Company; a new arrangement was drawn up, one which is none too satisfactory for the colony, but better than the old state of do-nothing; and then, for a time, the Midland Railway again dropped out of the public mind. How, however, we have word from London "that the Company have accepted the new tei’ms and that a desperate effort will be made to raise the million and a half necessary for the completion of the line. Let us hope this desperate effort may be successful. Whether the line will ever pay, whether indeed it was ever really wanted, save by the Canterbury people, who thought it meant the expenditui’e of a large sum of money and consequently a mild “ boom” for that province, is a matter upon which there will always be serious difference of opinion. But the line has been started and cannot well be allowed to remain unfinished. Its completion—when once that million and a half is raised —will be a matter of two or three years, but in everything connected with the Midland Railway we believe only in what we see, and we should advise our Canterbury friends to be chary how they indulge in any undue enthusiasm over the matter. Time enough for hat-t’ rowing, speechifying and the like when the million and a half is definitely raised. Till then, ardent hope, tem-

pered by mild scepticism, will be the attitude of most people on the matter.