THE NEW ZEALAND NATION.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXV, Issue 5872, 27 January 1880, Page 2

THE NEW ZEALAND NATION.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE HEW ZEALAND TIMES. Sir, —I was sorr y to see in your issue of today the uni leasant subject of the Canterbury riots brought up by your correspondent “Observer,” and evidently with no desire to “ cast oil upon the troubled waters” of public feeling on this matter. I should not, however, take notice of his letter by again recurring to the subject, had he merely misrepresented the tenor of my letter, without adopting this misrepresentation as a means through which to excite prejudice towards my fellow countrymen ou the part of their fellow colonists. Without referring to his hypocritical allusion to the verses entitled “ Ruckshons,” assuming (as he assumes) that my expressions embodied the sentiments of my own co-religionists on the subject of the primary cause of these riots, his statement that 1 had forgotten that I was a subject of the New Zealand Government is absolutely without a shadow of foundation in any expression contained in the letter ; and that it “ breathed a spirit of opposition to it in its endeavor to maintain law and order,” I must characterise as a wilful and malignant misrepresentation. Following up this mis-repre-entation, he says “ When those who are subjects of the Government of New Zealand feel so strongly upon what they consider the wrongs of Ireland, that they are prepared to wrong the New Zealand nation, of which they form a. part, and in. whose privileges they freely share, then I maintain they must be deprived of these privileges until they have

learnt how to use them, and not abuse them.” My letter is stil' on record, and X challenge him to quote one espv.->mu that eau he construed into a sentiment o: opposition to the New Zealand Government, or the pnnciplee of law and order. 1f ho quotes from my letter he will prove it to have been the very reverse. X should be sorry to identify the sentiments of » Observer” with any particular cla-s. They ase simply peculiar to a particular phase of human natuie. But it is only whilst laboring under snub attacks as these that the merely ordinary Christian realises the bitterness of the cup that is presented to him in the behest “pray for those who persecute and calumniate you.”—l am, £c,, An Irishman. P.S.—I shall not refer to.this subject again. [We have excised a portion of this letter, because it was of a somewhat personal character.— Ed. N.Z. Times.]