EGMONT ELECTION.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume IX, Issue 1699, 11 August 1887, Page 2

EGMONT ELECTION.

To the Editor of the Star.

Sir, — I gladly admit that I was both surprised and plensed with much of Mr. McGuire's address delivered in our Town Hall on tbe Ist insL, but it struck in* that he gave utterance to some grave and unjust misconceptions — kb instance, " He was sorry to say the press was against him." How he arrived at this idea with its columns before him, desecrated as they were, day after day and week after week, with barefaced and groundless slanders

vilifying the Major and eulogising him* ( self, puzzles me beyond measure. I cannot recall to my mind a single editorial remark which justifies the assumption. Whether Mr. McGuire has connived at, and approved of, these shameful letters, and accepted them as a means of advancing bis cause, I cannot say ; bat, if be has, they implicate him in eueh a condition of moral and political turpitude m should separate every honorable man from it ; and there are very stromg reasons for believing he has done all this. There are very strong reasons for believing that one of bis most intimate, active and zealous allies and advocates, bis chief political missionary, is the writer of the worst of them. Mr. Barton, I am informed, admits having written one signed "Economy." Another letter, com* mooting upon a speech of Mr. Bryce's, evidently written by a person used to feeding and folly mastering the bearing* of Acts of the Legislature, is also signed "Economy." The otter disregard of accuracy characteristic of these letters, is a distinctive feature in his con* damnation of tbe Major for increasing the grain freights upon the Canterbury railway. He said it was to make up revenue deficiencies, whereas it was for the laudable purpose of delivering the rest of the colony from a tax which was supplement* in» the profits of the Canterbury farmers ; and he called this a crime, for a lesser than which a king of England lost his beau — referring to Charles the First levying ship monoy in defiance of both law and Parliament. When Mr. Barton made this statement be koew he was speaking incorrectly. He knew that Charles' act i was treason, and the Major's, at die very worst, was but a venial error ; but Charles was not executed for this act, bat for attempting to subvert tbe constitution and establish in his own person an absolute monarchy. So much for Mr. Barton's historical accuracy. How can. a man wbo yields to so unbridled a license of tongue hope to be believed ? how can Mr. Barton expect to be believed, whatever efforts he may make to explain away the opprobrious remarks he is said to have made of Mr. McGuire ? and how is he to remove the suspicion that he is only using him as a stepping stone to his own ambition? I hope both Mr. McGuire and Mr. Barton may be able to vindicate themselves from the inferences I have raised, but I think they cannot but admit that they are reasonable. The writer of those letters should be publicly known and held in deserved execration ; until then they are a foul blot upon the district; such wantou liberty with a man's fair fame is distardly in the extreme. Discretion is said to be the bitter part of valour, but in cowardice, it is ignominy, for it is that whicb stabs in the back, AB&assin&tes Under cover of a tnaak and slanders under a norn de plume. — I

[RAD3HAW.

am, dec, Hawera, August 8.