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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 44

From Sydney Morning Herald

From Sydney Morning Herald.

"Talk and action (says the Sydney Morning Herald) may be fairly said to be the characteristics of the respective railway policies of New South Wales and New Zealand. We have been told almost nightly for years in our local Parliament that railways are the cheapest as well as the best roads that can be constructed. Yet we have barely 700 miles completed, only 208 miles in course of construction, and 210 miles approved. In New Zealand, with two-thirds of our population, they hare 1,100 miles opened, and over that colony there will soon be a perfect net-work of railways connecting every capital, and crossing the islands from east to west and north and south, in all directions. We have observed with satisfaction the rapid progress this Colony is making—how it has for several years been overtaking the Colony of Victoria. But page 61 there can be very little doubt New Zealand is growing with still greater rapidity; and it does not require great prescience to foresee that a continuance of its immigration policy, concurrently with the opening up of every part of its magnificent territory by a railway, will enable it ere long to outstrip any of the Australian Colonies in the race for national advancement, unless, indeed, more energy is displayed in future on this continent. Railways might be thought to be less required in a country of which no part is 100 miles from the ocean, than in one like ours, extending 700 miles from the seaboard. Those who guide the destinies of New Zealand, however, evidently have a high appreciation of how progress is to be promoted; and whatever their provincial jealousies may be, they are not allowed to interfere with a comprehensive railway scheme adapted to the requirements of all parts of the Colony."