SIR A. GORDON AND MR. BRYCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9030, 17 April 1888, Page 3

SIR A. GORDON AND MR. BRYCE.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir,—As an old official serving for years under Sir Arthur Gordon, and intimately acquainted with hie character, both public and private, I must beg to be allowed to protest against the tone of the paragraph in your issue of to-day about Sir A. <sordon and Mr. Bryce. You there designate the statements made in Sir A. Gordon's letter as " libellous " and "un truthful," and the letters themselves as " very foolish and untruthful." Allow me to eay that that is exactly what has to be proved by Mr. Bryce. From a knowledge of Sir Arthur Gordon and hie career, extending now over nearly twenty-two years, I feel certain for my own part, that be made no statements derogatory to Mr. Bryce, or anvone else, except after careful inquiry and firmly believing them to be true. He is the most cautious man I know about making personal remarks in writing, bufc ho is besides moeti conscientious—to use a much-abused word—and the very last man to assail another man's character, unless he firmly believed it was his duty to do eo. With many of Sir Arthur Gordon's views I have little sympathy, and he has an unfortunate manner with him, which has very much tended to make him unpopular; but no one who has witnessed, as I have, his unwearied labours in defence of the weak, the suffering, and the oppressed, —no one who has seen his scorn of all the petty acts by which some men gain popularity, or who knows the real kindness and benevolence of his nature, would, believe for one moment that he has been guilty of what your article charges to him. Sir Arthur Gordon stands as far above the ordinary kind of colonial Governors as the Earl of Chatham stood above the ordinary kind of English Prime Ministers, or Edmund Burke above the ordinary kind of English M.P.s. He has been vilified, misrepresented, and slandered in every place he has governed, by the agents of an unscrupulous and mercenary clique of mercantile adventurers, whose only idea is to pile up riches by the forced labour of the unfortunate creatures who happen to possess a skin a few shades darker than their own. He found in Trinidad and Mauritius a system more cruel than slavery at its worst. He fought against it until he had conquered it, and ne has suffered accordingly. But if there be a God in Heaven, He will reward the life's work of Sir Arthur Gordon.—l am, &c, R. H. Bakewull, M.D Auckland, April 14.