MR LEADIEY AT WAIAU.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVI, Issue 14428, 19 July 1907, Page 5

MR LEADIEY AT WAIAU.

• ♦ TO TITS EDITOR. Sir, —I have waited cilice reading Mr Leadley’s reply to Mr Gray till now, but Mr Leadley has not produced that evidence which he promised, wnicn was to provo Mr Gray an. untruthiul individual. I have good reason to remember that Mr Leadley distinctly stated on the platform at Waiau that ho had had an interview with .Mr M’Nab, and ho had told him (Mr Leadley) that ho (the Minister of Lands) had no> faith in his Bill. It struck me very forcibly at the time that, even if such were the case, Mr M’Nab is too shrewd a politician to give the show away to the gentlemen of the Opposition. It is very amusing to read Mr Leadley’s answer where he says hia manuscript notes of his speech contain nothing about that statement.' That may bo eo, but it would be the easiest thing in the world for Mr Leadley to say a whole lot at Waiau that was not in his notes. For instance, our Mr A. W. Rutherford, when he ■spoke at Waiau, said all his speech would bo it, the pamphlet which he was about *o issue. But he said a whole lot about; some individual having perjured hi?nself, in his Waiau address, which was nut in his pamphlet. It might be said why was not Mr Leadley taken to task for his statement about Mr M’N'nb at the time he made it; but ho made so manv statements that would tot go down with the Waiau audience that there -was, to use one of your correspondents’ terms, a continual running five of dissent through the whole address, and at the close of the meeting he was questioned very closely for some time, and he escaped being taken to rasK on the matter. Another ot Mr I eadley’s wild statements about the Government was that they were teap.r g up the colony’s debt in buying 23lates, and named Waikakabi as being an estate they had borrowed money iu London to pay for. I think, if my memory serve® me aright, the Government did not borrow the money in London to purchase that estate, but got it in their own country. I would like to sav here that I felt rather sorry for Mr Leadley and his North Island companion that night, for they ■ha« come a long way, and had to drive a distance of nearly forty miles after their address, and it seemed to- me a pity they had not devoted their ener-

gieis to a better cause than running down the Government and submitting themselves to a lot of adverse criticism from a hall full of farmers. The average farmer has none too much time jor politics, and I am one of them, a ;.<I my love of fair-play is my only esonso fo» t aid'it up so much of your spa 30. I am, etc.,- "WM. GALL.