THE 'ENSIGN' ON PROHIBITION.

Mataura Ensign, Issue 215, 14 November 1896, Page 2

THE 'ENSIGN ' ON PROHIBITION.

TO THE EDITOR. Slit, — Any amount of shuffling on your part will not extricate you from the difficulty of having wilfully misrepresented the Temperance party. Your " characteristic " footnotes, abounding with "spleen," "hobby riding," " bad taste," " nasty things," " excellent authority," etc., will never answer cold, hard fact, or remove falsehoods. Your attempt to make it appear that I imagined myself to be " the Temperance Societies and Bands of Hope " is a mere shuffle, and is best answered by the resolution which the combined Bands of Hope passed on Monday, 9th inst., viz., " That this Convention, representing 19 Societies, emphatically protests against the statement in the Mataura Ensign, and after making careful inquiries, concludes that there is not the slightest foundation for the statement made." Will you consent to give up the name of the " excellent authority " you had for making your statement, or any of the names of the "leading Prohibitionists" whom you state won't vote " no license," or will you lie under the imputation that you manufacture them ? You refer me to a letter appearing below your foot-note. You do not say if it is the one penned by " Charlton Flat," or that by " Ithuriel." The former is nearly as " nice " as that which appeared in your last issue about the lunatics ; the latter is as far from the truth as was your statement re the Bands of Hope, and the man who wrote it ought from his education to know better than to attempt to make the public believe in the possibility of " Mr McNab converting the Sunday/School machinery to further his political candidature." Try again, Mr Editor, or let Ithuriel try, and while you are at it say that all the churches are banded together to make common cause against the Conservative party and secure Mr McNab's return to Parliament, and the evolution is complete. If we are to read, " Add to your Political Societies, Temperance Societies, and to Temperance Societies, Bands of Hope, and to Bands of Hope, Sunday Schools, and to Sunday Schools Churches, and to Churches victory," then whoever and whatever commands this aggregation of forces need not feel afraid though they may be opposed by robbery, unrighteousness, falsehood, liquor, and the Matauba Ensign. Like the sailor in the boat, I have not troubled you much lately, and I won't trouble your columns again. — I am, etc., J. G. W. Elms. [The unwritten laws of journalistic etiquette and other considerations forbid us revealing to our correspondent the name of our " excellent authority," and even were we at liberty to do so, we should decline to gratify his curiosity. Knowing the weight they will carry, we are by no means awed at his Christian-like imputations of deception on our part. The resolution passed by the Temperance Convention in no way shakes our bona fides in the matter, and even if we were misled, the fault does not lay with us. Our correspondent might invoke in this case the occult powers which led certain of his party on Thursday night to per- ! ceive to their own satisfaction that a ' certain letter was fathered at this office, and so set at rest his own doabts and : fears upon the much-vexed identification of the individual whom we choose to term ' our " excellent authority," without appealing to us for assistance in his laudable object. — Ed. Ensign.]