MR BURNS' DEFECTION.

Clutha Leader, Volume IV, Issue 174, 9 November 1877, Page 6

MR BURNS' DEFECTION.

TO THE EDITOB. Sir, —With your leave I would make a few remarks on a paragraph in your last issue referring to Mr Burns, the member for Roslyn. It is the height of nonsense as well as injustice to accuse the member for Roslyn of deserting his party : the truth is he never was identified with the party now in power, further than in the endeavour to maintain Provincialism. Mr Burns has not been in accord with this party from the time the cause of Provincialism became hopeless, and I hardly think it is creditable to the intelligence of the electors of Roslyn district even to suggest that their member went up to Parliament to act as a flunkey to any party in the House. Despite ths abuse to which Mr Reid has been stibjeeted, the sound sense of the member for North Taievi led him to make his choice in the conflict that followed cYbolition. Mr Burns was equally at liberty to act as" seemed good to him, and it would have been well for the Colony if the members for Otago had acted as' Messrs Burns and Reid have done. Revenge may be sweet, but assuredly it has also its bitterness, and unfortunately here the bitterness is felt by the constituents. The petition to which you refer calling on Mr Burns to resign, had a suspicious proximity in point of time to the visit of one of the Dunedin members, whose chief ability lies in casting dust into weak eyes. Ifc is a sign of much infirmity of character to call upon a member to resign when he happens not to please in some matter, bat good sense and sound views of representative government alike condemn such a course, and the partisanship that resorts to it is neither enlightened nor liberal.' —l am, etc., Elector. Princes-street, Dunedin. P.S.—On the best authority the 300 signatures to which you refer as appended to the petition asking Mr Burns to resign, has been declared to be a false statement —there were but 100 appended of names on the electoral roll, and 20 nondescript.