IN DEFENCE OF A DEAD PREMIER.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XLIX, Issue 12667, 1 December 1905, Page 2

IN DEFENCE OF A DEAD PREMIER.

To the Editor.

iSir,— Every fair-minded man who lhas not been contaminated by the example of New Zealand's great Prime^ Minister will thank you for your defence of a dead Premier. I heard Mr., geddon at the Opera House, heard him declare that soup kitchens and 2s 6d a day were the only remedies the Conservatives could find for a condition of affairs brought about by their own mis-govern-ment. He did not mention the deficit, the fact that the country's credit was as bad as it could be (the immediate results of Liberal management), nor the courage with which Sir Henry Atkinson faced a well-nigh hopeless •situation. The* low price of our products and the failure of the Liberal Government were alike ignored. This is the great man, the man who stands with (his hand on his great bleeding heart, and roars out (his platitudes about honour and generosity, at the very time that he is slandering a dead man whose services to New Zealand as Premier, soldier, and statesman he can never hope to emulate. It is this sort of meanness, thinly veiled under the. assumption of a bluff and hearty manner that absolutely sickens men who, like myself, though in sympathy with much of his platform', absolutely decline to believe, in his bona fides. Your article referred to 1837, but what about 1879 ? (Here again was a Liberal mess left for th© Conservatives to clean up. Was not the deficit something like a million sterling? In other words, the two igreat financial crises in New Zealand's 'history were absolutely produced by Liberal Government, and the situation saved by the Conservatives. Mr Seddon asks us to believe that New Zealand's difficulties were produced by the Conservatives, whereas the exact opposite is the truth. Tt seems almost necessary to remind New Zealanders that New Zealand was a flourishing colony before Mr Seddon was heard of, and that ihis predecessors converted a wilderness into a smiling garden, which they ihanded over to the care of this great man. 'Should they hot also be reminded that the success of the colony is due, in the main, to their own energy and enterprise, assisted by a good climate and rich land, and that Mr Seddon is trying to make them believe that he and he alone is tlhe source from which ail blessing flow ? If this is so, what will happen to New Zealand when Ma- Seddon goes? Sine will indeed be— An infant crying in the night, An infant crying for the lignt, And with as language but a cry. —I am, etc.,