LIBERALS BE FIRM AND TRUE.

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 123, 22 November 1893, Page 2

LIBERALS BE FIRM AND TRUE.

TO THE EDITOU OF THE STAU. Sib,— The Opposition Tarty being busy in their own favourite ways trying to get our votes in support of their candidate, it is right for us to intelligently resist, and and defeat their gracious intentions. Sometimes we meet their emissaries circulating dreadful yarns about our Liberal candidate; then a number of distorted facts and untruths appear in newspapers about the Government, nnd its intentions, and the " Covenanting Hills of Scotland " are dragged in (at the wrong historic door) to do them service. All this fudge proceeds from their gross ignorance of facts, or from trickery ; and, if from the latter, then how terribly does their political creed degrade mankind. Mr Lethbridge, the chosen one of the Tories, poses as a Liberal, and yet intends to oust a Liberal Government from power. He must therefore excuse us if we call him a sham Liberal, and John Bright— his goal — is about to share the fate of all great Reformers being used as a kind of a hi; chilly post for Con* servatives who object to new reforms. I predicted that real sham Liberals would soon appear and a few of them are bobbing around this season. Owners of large estates are the most dangerous class we could entrust with our rights and liberties ; for all other classes depend on local population for their support, not so the " big bug." A foreign market for his produce, thousands of people in seaport towns to pay taxes for him, and a country whero no " Cockatoo " farmers are found, is his ideal world, and his Government always tend to produce such a country. I know them and their grasping ways very well. The present Government, while its finance is belter than that of its predecessors, has given women the franchise, has established a Labor Bureau, reduced farmers' taxes, intends to continue subsidies to local bodies, and has made the public estate, if not all property, " eternally " secure to the people — to farmers, small capitalists, new churae, strngglers, and their future generations— against the land grabber aud the moneylender. That is the trouble, property is being secured against their creed, and it is they and their dupes who cry out against the Government. We Liberals may never see our ideal candidate, but let us make the best of it and support the true progressive party. And if the Opposition spring as usual their clever trick, religious rancour, or wonderful revelation, let us pity them but vote straight for our own man. I am, etc , Fakmeb. Feilding, November 21st, 1898.