IN DEFENCE OF MR BAKER.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1106, 12 May 1893, Page 38

IN DEFENCE OF MR BAKER.

We cannot agree with the ' Superior Person's' remarks about Mr Baker, kt the same time we must, compliment the 'Superior Person' on the mildness with which he has handled the Chief Commissioner of Lands. For a critic who has passed the severest judgments on every living creature with whom he differed, impugning motives and raking up every variety of personal gossip, this mildness is good. May we hope it is a sign of a coming better state of things rather than of incipient softening of the brain ? But mildly expressed as the criticism is we cannot agree with it. Every officer has a right when one of his chiefs dies to make allusion to his character and the work he has done, provided, of course, ho enters into no debatable matter of politics. Mr Baker did nothing more than this. He mentioned facts which prove that some of the village settlements with which the late Premier's name was associated have done the excellent work of settlement expected of them. Mr Baker knew that to many cottages and farmhouses prosperity, happiness and plenty has come through the village settlement system. In bearing that testimony he did a service to the cause of truth and an act of justice to the memory of Mr Ballance. With that knowledge in his possession, only the narrowest judgment could insist upon his keeping silence under the circumstances. Mr Baker has told the truth without breaking any law written or unwritten.