The Wily Rees.

Observer, Volume XI, Issue 753, 3 June 1893, Page 2

The Wily Rees.

Mb W. L. Bees has done his cause no good by his mission to Auckland. The cunning little device of calling bis friends and well-wishers together and discussing the impending libel action with them may have seemed a very fair and proper thing in his eyes, but it has not presented itself in such an honourable aspect to the people at large. This case is sub jvdice, and a newspaper editor would be committed for trial for commenting upon it. And yet one of the parties is allowed to call meetings of his friends and of eleotors together, and to deliver speeches and explanations bearing upon the case at issue. Surely this is calculated to prejudice the case before it is heard.

Mr Rees's speeches have, at all events, not made a very favourable impression so fax as be is concerned. He has not succeeded in prejudicing the Government, but he has created a stronger feeling of public sympathy than ever towards Mr Cadman, for a generous public invariably takes the side of an absent man in a quarrel of this kind. And even from an electioneering point of view, Mr Rees's speech was a failure. He was too ready to swallow anything — he even swallowed the Bible-in-schools policy — but it wouldn't do. Swallowing performances on the hustings are not to be trusted, and by contrast with unfulfilled pledges from a previous election they must be liberally discounted. But the funniest part of Mr Bees's public address was his assurance that he never bought an acre of native land in all his life. Why, this was in effect the substance of Mr Mitchelson's indictment of him at the last election, and, by the way, those accusations of Mr Mitohelson's have never been replied to yet.