MR SMITH AGAIN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 72, 8 November 1911, Page 5

MR SMITH AGAIN.

(To the Editor “Stratford Post.”)

Sir, —Evidently your correspondent, T. Cuthbert (like bis inaccuracies') is very much lost in the masse of politics and poetry. If my memory serves mo right, and I believe it does, in the late seventies that good and great administrator, Sir George Grey, was in power. He was the statesman who initiated the different systems of land tenure in New Zealand, of which so many Taranaki settlers—myself included—are reaping the benefits to-d.iy. Furthermore I submit in looking up old files, that hi eightyfive and seven the Stout-Vogel Government were in Power, with the Hon. John Balance as Minister of Lands and Defence. Whether your correspondent infers that he likewise was a Tory too, I don’t know. However, every student of history knows that Liberalism as we know it to-day has very much departed from the traditions and high ideals of that statesman, of whom the present writer was a warm admirer, and in looking backward over the long vista of years, I wonder (and ev’ery thinking mind 1 think will agree with me) which of the two Governments was the most humanitarian? Which was tho_ most considerate for its people in a time of stress and real hardship? Sir Harry Atkinson, who came into office with a depleted treasury and to save the credit of this country found relief work for its people, or the so-called cum Liberal Government of to-day, who in its large-heartedncss and to cover up its tricks of wrong-doing and maladministration, turns out adrift into the street (almost without notice) a largo number of Civil Servants to weather the storm. In conclusion it has been the tradition of true Liberalism to consistently maintain the doctrine of individual liberty. Liberty is absolutely essential to human progress. Yvo all want liberty to think, to speak, to act, to buy, to sell, to risk a loss in the hope of realising a gain. Those asp things for which the human race are alwaysstriving and 1 venture to think in tliis country the present condition of things will not he of long duration, and that in the future New Zealanders of all creeds will be found working together for (the enlargement of human ‘(liberty.—l am, etc., .. . w J. SMITH. Stratford, November 7th, 1911.