THE HARBOR QUESTION.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 180, 9 August 1888, Page 3

THE HARBOR QUESTION.

A DISSENTER. (TO THE EDITOR.) Sib,—l am not going tn vote against the continuance of the harbor works, nor am I going to vote for it: I am just going to leave it alone, which in point of fact amounts to a condemnation. I have carefully weighed the arguments used on either side, and I must say I am more amused than convinced by the arguments in favor of continuation. If the supporters of the continuation are just left alone it strikes me they will be condemned out of their own mouths. First we note that the portentous words of Mr Mills are carefully ignored; then we are told that the Australia might be considered a cockleshell in London 1 but she is a regular—if I can be a little Irish —small Great Eastern to Gisborne; then some one pokes fun at the Union Company, to whose shackles we need only say liaera and we are free—free as the fetterless winds that blow o’er the Kaiti (excuse the poetic senti. ment— it is quite accidental). “ We are the nation,” we the Mahommet to whom the mountain must come. Yet we have a serious question before us, and though I may not seem serious I mean it, Someone say we are pledged to the present harbor; this I strongly resent, and if it is insisted on I say it is a falseheod. What was the prospectus that

was put before the people ? Was it not almost guaranteed that no rate would be required before and after a certain period ?—that we should have endowment revenues ?—our exports increase at an amazing rate and our imports increase only in a healthy way ?—in fact there was going to be a gigantic boom which only a Jules Vernes would have been competent to describe? If we had left the harbor alone we would have had a chance which was lost to us of getting an amount of public money spent in the place as it ought to have been, and there would have been sober prosperity until we could raise either a capital river scheme, or with confidence undertake a work of greater magnitude than the present, Had we been wise in time I believe that we would have been sufficiently firm now to be just about commencing works of a large nature, and that without the least hardship. Now what does it mean ? get the Australia alongside, estrange the Union Company, tax us up to the hilt, drain the district’s very sustenance from it, and drive it to “ pot.” Not me I —l am &c., Scrutator.