CORRESPONDENCE.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9327, 30 January 1896, Page 6

CORRESPONDENCE.

TO CORRESPONDENTS. Wβ cannot undertake to publish letters copies of which have been sent to any other journal. Correspondents desiring insertion of their communications should, therefore, send us a statement that they have not been and will not be forwarded to any other paper. The Election. —We are overwhelmed with letters on the Christohurch electionfar more than we can publish. We shall, make an impartial selection from both sides, but cannot undertake to print every communication that is sent to us, especially as many of them repeat the same thing in different terms. A Visitor.—You should either sign your letter or forward you? charge to the Inspector of Police. MR T. E. TAYLOR AND THE DRINKSELLERS' LITANY. TO TUB EDITOR OF THE PRESS. Sir,—Your leader in to-day's issue under the above heading forces mc to some acknowledgment of the references you have made to mc during the past fortnight in connection with my candidature for the Christchurch seat. Your leader on the 18th inst., doaling with my address in the Opera House, bristled with distorted views and grossly exaggerated statements; but as my address was fully reported in the same issue, I relied upon it to expose your editorial folly and fury. May I now refer to one point in your leader of the date named to illustrate mv charge of exaggeration. You.say—" He is "a Radical of Radicals, a disciple of Henry George, whom he is never tired of quoting." I plead guilty to having studied Henry George's works, and iv my case you will doubtless condemn cuch hardihood as a criminal action; but at the Opera House I did not make a single quotation from that author's works, the only reference to him being the use of his illustration as to the conduct of the saloon and steerage passengers on a steuiner by which he was travelling. This illustration I used when speaking on the old age pension question, to emphasise the fact that people whose every want is supplied are free irotn the uurest that is noticeable amongst those who feel that it in a case of "every man for himself and the deil take the hindmost." Your absurd statement re Henry George forms the basis for the lengthy effusion appearing in your issue of yesterday over the signature of " Walter Hill," and you should apologise to Mr Hill for having by your hysterical utterances put him to the trouble ol chasing a chimera of yours, not my creation. Whilst I endorse much of Henry George's philosophy I did not at the Opera House quote him, neither do I now discuss him. The series of references to my candidature that have appeared in your columns have contained so many untruths that I despaired of maintaining a speed necessary to cope with them, but your hostility in today's issue has culminated in such a glaring falsehood that I must protest publicly against' your conduct. You say that a queetion at my Knights town meeting last evening " was addressed to him viva voce so that he could not get out of is by tearing up the paper as he did on previous occasions when it was written." I deny absolutely your statement that I tore up any question on any occasion having reference to the Drinkeellers'Litany, and claim an apology from you. I crumpled up ?>t the Opera House some questions that were duplicates of those already answered. I don't remember whether any question came up on that occasion referring to the "litany" over whioh your virtuous soul is so vexed. If it did and I did not answer it, the reason would be that such a question would be quite irrelevant |to any public question I had touched upon. Your statement that I fenced this question of whether I approve of the •• litany," at Knightstown, is unjust and untrue. I have fenced no queetion at any of my meetings, as any honest man must admit. But I charge you with an exaggeration in your report of my meeting at Knightstown, that, in view your nnreasoning opposition to mc, I am inclined to think is deliberate. I said—" Some bleary-eyed, beery-mouthed individuals, who had no veneration for sacred things, no respect for God or religious convictions, were flaunting this article, called the " Drinksellere' Litany," and for purely political dubbing it as blasphemous." You renderthis as a statement that "most ot the men who criticised that article," &c. If political excitement is not j now dominating yonr mind, even you will j probably discern the degree of misrepresentation of which you have been guilty. Your references to the sort of man who is asking the people for their confidences and my Cathedral square style at you are pleased to style it, I can afford to ignore. If I had ever been guilty at any time or in any place of the use of such malignant language and misrepresentation to an opponent as you have displayed towards mc during the past forti night, I should feel ashamed to look any honest man in the face. The fuss you are making over the " Drink* sellers' Litany " is so palpably an attempt to render political aid to your protege, Mr Lewis, under a righteous indignation against anything savouring of disrespect for sacred things, as to make men smile at your assumption cf virtue. ' I look forward with confidence to the judgment of the electors, and feel confident that all your frantic efforts to discredit mc, made with a view to conserve the vested interests for whose defence yon exist, will prove futile.—Yours, &c, Thomas E. Taylor. Christohurch, January 29th, 1896. [Mr Taylor's personalities we can afford to ignore, but in justice to one of the most careful members of our staff we cannot pass over his attack on our report of his Knightstown meeting. Wβ have satisfied ourselves from an examination of the reporter's shorthand notes, and from the testimony of independent persons present at the meeting, that our report was strictly correct. We do not understand Mr Taylor when he asserts so positively in one breath that he did not tear up a written question about the " Drinksellers' Litany," and yet tells us in the very next sentence that he does not remember whether any such queetion came up to him or not. It is evident, we think, that his memory is not to be depended upon in reference to what he either says or does at his meetings. As to the candidate's Cathedral square style of oratory the public will be able to judge from a further specimen which he inflicted on his meeting at Waltham last evening, reported in another column.—Ed. Pbbss.J