REFORM ASSOCIATION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXI, Issue 7221, 22 April 1884, Page 6

REFORM ASSOCIATION.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —You call attention, in a paragraph of to-day’s issue, to tho meeting held last night at Papanu.i, and say that the Working Men’s Political Association seem to think that they should he the only body to have a say in political matters. Allow me, as a member of that body, to tell the public, through your columns, that the Association does nothing of the kind. Mr Domey, the President of the Association, stated that he did not know of anj body, save the Association, which was attempting to take any part in politics, and objected to a resolution passing an encomium on a mere myth. I can assure you. Sir, that the Working Men’s Political Association will be always ready to work hand-in-hand with any body which may be formed upon a true Liberal platform for the bond fide advancement of Liberal views, but it cannot be expected to do so with something which has no real existence ; and these are, I believe, the reasons which induced Mr Dorney to take the course he did.

Why, I may ask, did Mr Andrews leave the platform, instead of explaining to the meeting what the Reform Association, of which he styled himself the Secretary, was. I have very little doubt, that if he could have shown that such a body had an existence, he would have a strong support from, and the hearty co-operation of, the Working Men’s Political Association. But Mr Andrews cannot suppose that .the public, or the Association, will be gulled into getting up a support for such a bogus thing as he has attempted to foist on them. That those members of the Association present at the meeting did not in any way object to the condemnation of the present Ministry, and of Mr Eolleston’s action in connection therewith, is proved by their voting unanimously for the first resolution ; and that they were not singular in their dissenting from the resolution proposed by Mr B. Cass is also proved by what fell from both the Chairman of the meeting and Mr Templar, It is clear, therefore, that the meeting could not have approved of Mr S. P. Andrews’ attempt to obtain public approbation for some imaginary Association, which evidently has no real existence outside its self-appointed Secretary’s imagination.—l am, &c., BONA FIDE. Christchurch, April 19.