MORE "BROKEN FAITH."

Opunake Times, Volume I, Issue 27, 2 October 1894, Page 2

MORE "BROKEN FAITH."

(to the editor.) Sir,—l had not intended to say anything by way of reply to the grossly personal attack you thought fit to make on rne in your issue of the 18th inst. If this sort of thing gives you or your readers pleasure I do not object, for it is regarded with the most supreme indifference by me. Had a report of what transpired at last meeting of the Hawera County Council in connection with merging appeared in the issue in which the article appears, I should have been content to leave the matter with the public ; but neither in that issue nor the following one is there the slightest reference to it, not withstanding.that you have hitherto printed the pioceediugs of the Couucil as they appeared in the Star. lam forced to the conclusion, therefore, that you wish the public to form their opinions by simply hearing your garbled version of the affair. The course I took, I thiuk, will commend itself to the sober judgment of most men. True, I promised at the Awatuna meeting, represented by some six or eight ratepayers, that I would not present the petition unless the bye-road settlers' rate was protected. So much emphasis was put on the necessity of having this stipulation in the petition that, on the moment, I considered it a vital omission, and I determined to withdraw the petition. My resolution, I confess, began to waver when I found the chairman declare the petition was right as far as it could be ; that Hawera merged and had been getting on very well without keeping a separate bye-road rate and account; that the eastern end of Waimate had merged unconditionally, without the clause which you maintain is necessary for the salvation' of the bye-road settler. No one knew those facts better than yourself, but you did not divulge them at the meeting. I am also informed that you raised this very point when those parts of the county merged.- If this is correct your predictions have been falsified in actual practice, however correct you may be in theory.* Your reference that I obtained signatures by the "grossest misrepresentation" is an insult to the intelligence of the ratepayers, who have had the subject of merging before them for the past ten years. » Why did not my accusers come forward at the Awatuua meeting like men and cite some illustration of misstatement. On the contrary they pretended, as you did some weeks ago, to sympathise with the movement if it contained the stipulation omitted, while a few days after they sign a petition stating that they signed the other owing to my misrepresentations, one of the signatories being a member of the Road Board. Is there any "broken faith" discernible here 3 The opposition. of former years to merging Waimate is dead and gone; the dying embers are represented by a few llickeriug lights at the extreme ond. Your very personal and abusive article, if ifc wants assistance, will assist it. In future keep your prophecies for those who believe them, and your anger for those who fear it.—l am, &o , (jEORUE HI^DIIN'jWAY. September 2i, 1804.