The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1887. OPPOSITION TACTICS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1663, 15 September 1887, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1887. OPPOSITION TACTICS.

The Oppositionists, it must be admitted, are clever m one respect. They seldom make a mistake m rightly judging their opponent's strong points. They have formed a pretty correct estimate as to the hold which Mr Walker deservedly has on the working men. His coming forward as a supporter of the present Government, who have done so much for the working classes, would of itself be a sufficient guarantee that m his hands their interests would be well looked after. But Mr Walker has something more than this on which the confidence of the working men m him has been built up. He has his past public life to refer to, a record to which he can point with just pride, and ask if on any one occasion he has betrayed the trust they have so long reposed m him. This his opponents have recognised and have accordingly set to work to sap. and undermine his influence with the working men. They know that his position m their esteem is top strong to admit of their making a direct charge of having injured the working men by his own act or consent, so they apparently have resorted to the cowardly course of spreading about insinuations as to his want of loyalty to the cause of the working classes. They know, from long experience that " insinuations " do their fell work iar more effectually than op2n false assertion. A specimen of this appeared m our issue of Monday. In the correspondence column of that issue there was published a letter signed " Working Man," stating that though Mr Walker might not have had anything to do with bringing the unemployed from Chrislchurch to work on the Mount Somers Railway, at a time when there were many men m Ashburton out of work, yet if he was not much mistaken Mr Walker was instrumental m bringing numbers of the unemployed from Christchurch to work on the Tinwalk road and protective works. This is, if possible, a grosser slander than the one about the Mount Somers railway, which had just been refuted when " Working Men " fired another random shot. His letter had elicited a reply from " Truth," who gives all the particulars. To these we invite special attention, as they show how truly Mr Walker has the interests of the working men at heart, and how he exerts himself for their benefit.

We should have thought that the prompt refutation of the previous slander of the Opposition party would have deterred them from again having recourse to such ignoble weapons, but it would seem that like other bad habits that of slandering opponents is hard to be broken off. Still, we warn them that the public are growing weary oi their slanders, refuted as soon as they appear m print, which only recoil on the disseminators, to their groat discomfiture and chagrin.