GENERAL NEWS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5211, 19 March 1895, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS.

THE PEEMIEE AND MR M'LELLAN. A telegram from Wellington says that tbe Premier desires tbe following to bs published in reply to a statement recently made by Mr M'Lellan :— •" The Premier in his address at Wanganui Btated that Mr M'Lellan, President of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce, was biassed against the Government, and that hi 3 annual address itself was contradictory, and to provo this quoted the following extracts from the address of the President ;— ' So far as he could learn from inquiry never before had a president of the Chamber beeo compelled to review a year duiing which the prices of our exported produce had been so abnormally low and quite out of proportion with the cost of production. Uutil we weie able to bring the supply of all products more into accord with the demand we would experience low and unremunerntive prices.' When referring to the depression later on, Mr M'Lellan said : 'There was no use blinking the fact that the dulness referred to was due in a great measure to the want of confidence that existed in the colony and to the interference with traders by recent legislation.* i The latter parb of the address, therefore, | contradicted the first, and ia proof that the President was biassed, the Premier, in his speech at Wanganui, Btated that Mr j M'Lellan, the president, together with | an ex-president, Mr Gale, had solicited subscriptions towards a fund for paying the expenses of a good speaker to stamp the country in opposition to the present Government. If Mr M'Lellan will state that he has not j subscribed towards this fund, that he has nob solioited or was not present with Mr Gale when subscriptions were solicited, { there ia- little doubt that he will receive the amende honorable claimed, but not till ' then."