A Discreditable Attack.

Mataura Ensign, Issue 222, 1 December 1896, Page 3

A Discreditable Attack.

♦ MR McNAB ON SIR HARRY ATKINSON. Speaking at Wyndham on Saturday night, the Hon. G. F. Richardson said he had always endeavored, and believed he had succeeded, either in not speaking of an opponent at all, or else speaking in such a way as not to hurt his feelings, but now he was coinpolled to speak out. and, he feared, unpleasantly. He could stand any amount of knocks, any criticism of himself, he was used to it and didn't mind ; it did'nt trouble him ; but when it came in such a form that he was sorry to say showed Mr McNab had forgotten himself as a gentlemen and made so frightful an attack upon the memory of the speaker's old colleague, the late Sir Harry Atkinson, he must speak out. Who was Sir Harry Atkinson ? One of the pioneer settlers of the colony, a man who in the early days braved- all the difficulties and fought for the colony. Then he entered public life and worked his way up step by step till he attained the highest positions the people could bestow upon him. He was a man with a big heart and large sympathies, who worked for the welfare of his country the whole of his life, and when at last he died in harness, in spite of the high positions he had held, and the opportunities he had had for accumulating money, he died a poor man. He was a man of the highest honor, of the highest integrity, and here was a boy scarcely out of school who dared to make these remarks about him : " What a wholesale swindler was the man who was at the head of the Government then." The man at the head of the Government was Sir Harry Atkinson. This had pained him (the speakee) initnensely. Did Mr McNab realiso that the deceased statesman's widow and family were still living ? Did he recognise what it was to go into graveyards and not be able to leave dead men alone, men who, when alive, were too good to associate with him ? Mr McNab had done for himself by ihis action, for if the electors returned him to Wellington none of the members would associate with him. These statements of his, until he made the most abject apology concernthem, would go the length and breadth of the country, and ho would be sent to Coventry, and deservedly so. He could pitch into the speaker as much as he liked, and he would take it in good part, but this was the most painful occurresce that had taken place during the whole of his public life, to see his old comrade's memory traduced in this scurrilous fashion. This matter they would see would ring from one end of the colony to the other. Send Mr McNab up if they liked, but they would see that he had lost caste with the others, and it would take him years, if he ever succeeded, in regaining it. It was such a dastardly thing to say of such a man. The speaker was sorry to have been compelled to speak thus, but such an occasion demanded plain speaking. ,