THE PAHIATUA BYE-ELECTION.

Otago Witness, Issue 2667, 26 April 1905, Page 17

THE PAHIATUA BYE-ELECTION.

On the evening before last session began the Premier delivered a policy speech in one of the big halls in Wellington ; io was supposed to be a particularly good speech, and no doubt it was from Mr Seddon's point of view. They thought so much of it in Wellington that it was printed in pamphlet form. Early in the session Mr O'Meara's death rendered' the Pahiatua seat vacant, and naturally the Government was particularly anxious to retain possession of this seat, and the election was hurried on. It occurred to some of the Government party that it woukl\be a real good thing to send w a number of copies of Mr Seddon's speech ; but there was a difficulty, for the Premier had been letting himself go on the land question, expressing an opinion adverse to the freehold, and stating that to give the settlers the freehold would mean loss of revenue to the colony and might mean repudiation, which utterances, by the way, he believed had had a bad effect on the colony's credit. However, Pahiatua was a freehold constituency, and no candidate would nave the slightest chance of being elected there who was not sound as to that question, so the difficulty of Mr Seddon's 1 speech was got over by reprinting the pamphlet and leaving out every word about the land question. — (Laughter.) There in one hand he showed' them the Pahiatua edition and there in the other the Wellington edition. However, an opponent of the Government was elected. When the Premier was addressing a city constituency he was always against the freehold, but when addressing a country constituency he was always in favour of the freehold. They had heard a good deal about the