CHEVIOT.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIII, Issue 10653, 14 May 1895, Page 4

CHEVIOT.

Oub morning contemporary is so much delighted with the attitude assumed by two or three speakers at a small meeting of settlors held at Cheviot on Friday evening, that it has given its’ readers two long reports of the proceedings, and devoted a leading article to the consideration of the settlers’ position. Tho reports are nob of much consequence. They merely show that an elaborate attempt was made last week to convince a body of sensible men that the low prices from which they are Buffering are largely duo to tbe machinations or a wicked Grovernment. The sensible men refused, of course, to be convinced of anything so supremely ridiculous. They did, however, appoint a committee to prepare proposals for submission to another meeting, and on the strength of this, our contemporary recapitulates all the stories it has invented with regard to Cheviot since the purchase of the estate two years ago. Vfe need not follow its article at any length, but there is just one point that may be fairly taken as a sample of the whole. Three or four months ago our contemporary asserted that a party of co-operative labourers bad made a large profit out of a certain contract at Cheviot by sub-letting the work to a third party at a much lower price than the one they received themselves from the G-overu-mont. Wo showed at the time that this assertion was .absolutely untrue^

But now our contemporary repeats whole story, and presents it to its readers as a “spectacle of s failure within a failure,” Surety this is not the way to wir sympathy for the men who ar« struggling to establish themselves upon the Crown lands. And whai earthly good can misrepresentation oi this sort do to people who want to obtain a boon from the Govern* meat ? The position of some of the settlers is quite difficult enough without complicating it with political intrigues, and their true friends will not urge them to quarrel with thq only authority that can give there relief.