The New Zealand Herald and Daily Southern Gross.

Saturday, October 31, 1885.

The special meeting of the Chamber of Commerce yesterday, called to consider the proposal of the Government to raise and divert to public works generally the one million loan authorised for the North Island Trunk Railway was remarkable for two things. First of all there was complete unanimity on the part of those members of the House of Representatives present as to the fact that neither by those who last session voted for the reduction of the Public Works Estimates by £500,000, nor by those who voted against the motion for such reduction, was there the slightest conception that Government then cherished the covert intention to use the adoption of that motion as a pretext for utilising the North Island Trunk Railway loan for other public undertakings. Members who had taken different sides on the question of retrenchment, and who expressed their convictions on the invitation of the Chairman, declared emphatically that they had never heard of such an intention, and had never even suspected it. This was perhaps the most conclusive refutation that could have been given to the imputation of wilful blindness made by Sir Julius Vogel against those voting for the reduction of the Estimates in not recognising that the effect of their action would be precisely what they now strongly deprecated. It is clear that if those who opposed retrenchment equally with those who supported it failed to see that the carrying of the page break motion for retrenchment would be taken advantage of by the Government to our wit the House, then the contention of Sir Julius, that those who had voted for Captain Russell's motion "must have refused to consider the subject intelligently," is thereby proved to be baseless. There is no way of escaping from this conclusion, unless indeed upon the supposition, which would be fatal to the honour of Sir Julius, that he himself meant to pursue a course which he purposely concealed, and that some of his supporters stood in his secret. Even this supposition, however, would not materially affect the inference to be made from the fact that some of the staunchest followers of the Government declared at the meeting yesterday that they had not the remotest idea that the action of the House in reducing the Estimates would be construed into an illogical reason for the divergence of the North Island Trunk Railway loan. The imputation of intentional obtuseness, of which the Treasurer accuses those Northern members who supported Captain Russell's retrenchment motion, therefore applies to some of his own devoted friends, and has the unpleasant consequence of exhibiting his relations to them in a peculiar and rather dubious light.

The second thing for which yester-day's meeting was noteworthy is the unanimity with which the members of the Chamber adopted the resolutions embodying a protest against the misappropriation of the loan in question. This is not to be wondered at, as the object of the meeting was one which concerned very closely the whole community they represented. Whatever diversity of view there may exist among our representatives or the electors on questions of general politics, they are in perfect harmony on the matter of preserving their Trunk Railway Loan sacred for the purpose to which in 1882 it was by Act of Parliament devoted. On this question, indeed, the whole of the members and inhabitants af the North Island may be said to think as one man. Not even those North Island members who have seats in the Cabinet can possibly entertain an opinion adverse to this view. Even though some of the representatives might advocate as a prudential course the stopping of the railway until the native lands through which it is to pass are obtained, they yet did not, by so doing, countenance in the very slightest degree the idea that the loan specially designed for that important work should be misappropriated. When Sir Julius Vogel asks, "What object could members have had in stopping the railway, and refusing other loans, except to use the Trunk loan for defence and other purposes?" he must have imagined these members to be exceedingly deficient in fertility of motive. Their object, surely, was patent enough—namely, that the loan should be reserved for the purpose for which it was sanctioned. If, at the same time, they refused to sanction other loans, their obvious reasons were the conviction that, in the interests of the colony, no further borrowing should be authorised, and that there was sufficient money on hand to enable Government to [unclear: atte] to the defence of the country, and other matters requiring attention in the meantime, without necessitating a sacrilegious attempt on the sum already dedicated by Parliament to a specific purpose. These are the views which might very obviously be supposed to sway the members, who deemed it unwise to proceed with the Trunk Railway of the North Island until some definite arrangement had been come to with the natives respecting the lands it would traverse. They might be right or they might be wrong in advocating such a postponement, but they certainly could never intend their opinion on this matter to be perverted into a justification of the illegal dissipating of the Railway loan. In crediting them with such an intention, Sir Julius Vogel could only be imputing to them his own wayward thoughts. On this matter the position occupied by the members in position was precisely the same as that held by the Chamber of Commerce yes- page break terday. Its members, too, might possibly hold different views on the policy of securing the native lands before further expediting the Trunk Railway, as also on the policy of reducing the Public Works Estimates; but, as with one mind, they would yet be prepared to cry "Hands off" with respect to the Treasurer's projected seizure of their Railway loan. In the advocacy of their views it would never occur to any of them that this would be disingenuously used to the prejudice of their common interests; but the moment they became apprised of an official intention to resort to so unprincipled a device, they would unite in denouncing its nefariousness.

So obvious, indeed, is all this, that it is difficult to believe that either the Premier or the Treasurer is serious in the hints he has thrown out about floating the Trunk loan, and diverting it to general purposes. The statements made seem rather designed to serve a political purpose than to foreshadow a policy. It looks as if their object was to discredit the Northern members with their constituencies by drawing the attention of the latter to the financial loss they have sustained through the cutting down of the Public Works Estimates, which their members were mainly instrumental in effecting, and the still greater losses which such action might yet entail on them. That the Government might do what Mr. Stout and Sir Julius Vogel have virtually threatened to do, and, having used this loan for Public Works' votes, might then employ the necessities of the North Island Trunk Railway as a lever by which to compel the assent of the Northern members to the sanctioning of a large loan, to be available for certain speculative railways in the South as well as well as those sanctioned in the North, are among the possibilities which the proceedings of last session might tempt Ministers to realise. It would be a sweet revenge for the humilation to which they were subjected to be able to make those who thwarted them feel that they were outmanoeuvred after all. But will they really do what they seem to say they are resolved on? We take leave to doubt it; and the expression, with which Sir Julius Vogel closes his somewhat rambling and illogical telegram to the Chamber of Commerce, of the Governments non-intention to do anything but what the law requires, appears to favour this conclusion. It means in effect to say we might do what is hinted at, and it would only be serving you right if we did it, but yet we won't. Sir Julius Vogel has learned before now that, in politics especially, discretion is the better part of valour.