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Globe, Volume VII, Issue 727, 18 October 1876, Page 2

What will now become of the West Coast road ? The usual maintenance grant of £3OOO has been struck out of the estimates by a small majority. The history of that work is a very suggestive one. It cost originally a very sum, and, ever since, the Canterbury share alone of keeping it in a state of repair has been about £I2OO yearly. When the gold discoveries of West Coast districts were setting everybody in a state of ferment, the popular outcry towards opening up a means of wheel traffic between the plains and the coast was loud and intense. It seems a backward step in our colonial policy of progress to abandon it now. For closed absolutely this road will be, if not maintained out of the general revenue. The people of the districts through which it passes will never tax themselves to keep it in order $ and, besides, it is a work of a colonial character —a main trunk line and the only one connecting the two longitudinal coast lines of the Middle Island. The country adjoining is certainly of an inferior class, yet, to a certain extent, the existence of this arterial means of crossing the divide- must result, in time, in promoting the settlement of that portion of the interior. The loss of this road will be very much felt, as it is not only to W eo tland or to Canterbury that it is of use in the way of mail and passenger conveyance, but also to almost every part of the eastern watershed of the island. The Auckland and Otago members, at least those belonging to the Provineialist party, did their best in opposing the vote. Party feeling alone must have prompted them to do it, as they thought it a good opportunity to impress upon the public mind that, self-reliance and self-support being the so-called principle of the Abolition scheme, this was a natural sequence of its introduction. We must expect such paltry exhibitions now and then, but in the course of time, when Abolition has worked its effects on the colony, such petty jealousies will cease to exist.