The People’s Friend

South Canterbury Times, Issue 6235, 6 June 1890, Page 3

The People’s Friend

Mr John Lang, recently elected M.P. for Dundee, has been finding out that parliamentary honours make a man a mark for bogging letter writers. His reply to one of the tribe has been published, and it is likely to secure him some measure of peace. lie begins by saying that ho finds that it will cost him £IOOO a year to represent Dundee in Parliament, that he is worked all hours, and has not oven his Saturday afternoon to himself, as almost every working man has in Dundee, but has to spend it in replying to applications for subscriptions. The letter proceeds " While thoroughly approving of your society, I must set my face against the idea that a member of Parliament should be expected as such to subscribe to every religious, charitable, and benevolent association, to every cricket, football, and cycling club, and to every kind of movement and thing in which everybody happens to be interested. If I were made of money, I should soon disappear altogether if I gave myself away even in sixpenny bits to all who are applying to mo, I must, therefore, intimate once for all that, while not overlooking my personal obligations, I think that such applications should not be made as have poured upon me from so many quarters, both local and general, since I was elected a member of the House of Commons.”