New Plymouth Harbor.

Opunake Times, Volume III, Issue 155, 27 December 1895, Page 2

New Plymouth Harbor.

The following telegrams passed between the Premier and Mr McGuirc, M.H.R., on Tuesday : "F. McGuire, Esq., M.H.E.,

"Haw era.

"I am in receipt of your telegram of even date. In accordance with what I promised you at our interview on Thursday, I, as a matter of courtesy, informed you of the decision arrived at by Government. I regret that you should have embraced this as an opportunity to make political capital as you undoubtedly have done, in abusing the privilege granted to members, by sending me a seven-page telegram. Though late I. would advise you to have forwarded any communication you bad to make on this subject by letter. It would have been fuller, and you would have had an opportunity of doing justice to yourself. As it is, the fact still remains that behind the backs of the bondholders you advised the late Government to embrace the opportunity of securing the debentures, knowing as you did at the time that the default of the Harbor Board would be made good, and that they would be able to pay their interest for the year. Seeing that the Harbor Board debentures are now, according to your statement, at 5 over par, I fail to see where any injustice is done. If they are dissatisfied, we shall arrange for the purchase of the debentures. If they decline, then they are satisfied with the security, and have no grievance, and there the matter ends.—R. J. Seddon, Wellington." " Hon 11. J. Seddon, " Premier, Wellington. " The oiler of your Government to assist the Board to buy back the bonds is a valuable admission of what you previously denied, that the bondholders have been plundered of their security. "This admission also necessarily carries with it an admission that the Harbor Board have been robbed of of their endowment. It follows equally dourly that the ratepayers have lor years been piying a rate that would have never fallen upoj them, had the Board not been so robbed. "1. am gratiiied to find that the Government have at last awakened to the fact tliat the colony is answerable for the wrong done. What I complain of is that the reparation effected is only to tho bondholders, who ara only ono of the parties injured. You admit tho wrong, why do you not fac.i that wrong, and lot us got before a competent tribunal to obtain redress and rcparati >n at your hands, as so long urged by mo V Your carping remarks as to the cost of my telegram upon this public matter aro not only beside tho question but unworthy of you. F. Mofiriur.."