Clean Hands!

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2099, 1 August 1887, Page 3

Clean Hands!

Me A. W. Hogg, the “ Liberal ” candidate for Masterton, recently declared that he intended to contest the election with “ clean hands,” and then proceeded to describe the editor of the Wairarapa Daily as the “ Four-eyed Joker.” This is an allusion to the physical affliction which compels the editor of the Daily to wear glasses. It is an honor to our poor human nature that even the most brutal and depraved of our fellow creatures pity and respect those who suffer partially or wholly from that most terrible of all calamities—loss of sight. We have seen the most irreclaimably vicious assist and succor persons so afflicted. Yet here is a person—holding an important trust with regard to the education of the young; one who solicits from his countrymen the highest honor in their power to bestow, one who aspires to elevate public tone through tbe Press—so lost to all senie of decency, of charity, and of manliness thikt he taunts an estimable and inoffensive gentleman with a painful and lamentable affliction. In election times some latitude of expression is allowed, but no manly man would take advantage of that latitude to taunt another for a misfortune which is utterly beyond his control and grievous enough of itself to be borne. Mj Hogg declares very loudly—too loudly—that his hands are clean ; we have our own opinion regarding that, but no one can doubt that hie language is unclean in the extreme. A man who demeans human nature by such utter want of self control, demeans the electors by asking them to permit him to control them.