THE REV. MR. ELMSLIE AND THE AKAROA FANCY FAIR.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 53, 19 January 1877, Page 3

THE REV. MR. ELMSLIE AND THE AKAROA FANCY FAIR.

TO THE EDITOR OK THE AKAROA MAIL,

Sir,— I am rather surprised that you, a public man, haying to do with public matters, should criticise so harshly the Key. Mr. Elmslie, also a public man, and dealing with a matter bo public as tta Akaroa Fancy Fair, for venturing to criticise unfavourably, from a religious point of view, this same fancy fair. He cannot be said, I humbly submit, to be meddling with things that he has no business with, any more than you, sir, can justly be charged with meddling when you denounce mayors

and butchers' boys for culpable conduct. He has the same justification that you have yourself—viz, the . welfare of the community—you, from your point of view, and he from his. With regard to the merits of the case, of course different minds will think differently. For my own part whenever I hear of people professing to show respect to religion in such and kindred ways, I involuntarily think of a certain widow who, on her husbands Secease, got up a great ball,- and with the proceeds built a monument for him. Her justification no doubt would be—what seems to be reviving, as a maxim, in some quarters — that the end sanctifies the means. —I am, &c, WM. DOUGLAS.