Seek to Destroy it

by what they will be pleased to call improvements. Its two main features, the long distance stages and its extreme simplicity, they cordially hate, and I fear that if the matter is intrusted to them that the whole thing will be spoilt. It must be borne in mind that they have always ridiculed this system, and declared that it is impracticable, unjust, and will give disastrous financial results, and their determined page 9 hostility to it is well known to the whole country. It cannot be expected that they will exert themselves to falsify all they have been been saying for the last fifteen years, and no policy could be worse than to put such an important matter into the hands of its open and avowed enemies.

Our railway managers will no doubt point to the increased railway revenue for the past year as a proof of their superior skill, and they will plead that they are doing well, and ought not to be interfered with.

The fact is, they are no more entitled to claim credit for this increase than the customs officials are to claim credit for the increased customs revenue; in both cases the increased revenue is due to the same cause—the general revival of trade—and the officials have had nothing whatever to do with it. It is the Colony that has lifted the railways, and not, as it should be, the railways that have lifted the Colony.

It would be easy to prove, by a comparison with other countries, that our railway officials last year made a distinct failure The "good times" came to their rescue. The mere fact of a railway earning more revenue is no more a proof of right management than the possession of wealth is a proof of worth.

The true test of successful railway administration is the effect that administration has on the social and financial condition of the country generally, and it cannot be pretended that the position of our producers has been improved by any of the changes made in our railway administrators.