CHARITABLE AID.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3042, 26 March 1881, Page 3

CHARITABLE AID.

[Tomb Editor op the Daily Telegraph.] Sir, —You have, in my opinion, taken a Very erroneous and one-sided view of the action of the Town Council in refusing to vote a sum of money to the Benevolent Society. You attempt to make it appear that the motives actuating the majority of the members of that body are very questionable ones, and you quite gratuitously assume that what you complain of is the result of sclerotic indifference to human suffering and niggardly callousness. To begin with, you make the whole affair one of mere pergonal feeling; and, after asserting that the Mayor and Councillors are utterly unfit for their positions, contrast the mean, miserly feeling at the bottom of their actions, with the grand and benign beneficence of Mr Sutton, who, as chairman of a public body, forwarded an amount of money for charitable purposes which had been voted by that body. In this you are altogether at fault. You have no more right to gushingly melt into intense thankfulness to Mr Sutton than you have to pointlessly rebuke the Mayor. I have nothing to say againßt Mr Sutton, or for the Mayor, personally ; but I wish to shew tbat what you seem to think ia a difference of disposition between these two gentlemen, on matters oharitable, is purely and simply accidental. The County Council voted a Bum of money. Good ; if the Council had good reasons; and Mr Sutton forwarded the cheque. The City Council refused to rote a sum of money. Good also; if tbe City Council had good reasons; and the Mayor forwarded no cheque. Can you not now see that neither of the two gentlemen in question are entitled to be praised or blamed for what they relatively did? And now more particularly to the line of action adopted by the City Council. Did you not remember, or is it news tv know, that the Corporation is within an ace of Municipal bankruptcy, and does not know at this moment how to meet pressing and necessary liabilities p To impute this to reckless squandering is beside the mark. You may be pertinent in making the statement, but it has nothing to do with tbe point now at issue. The question is not " why is not the Corporation better off; " but, " why did not the Council vote money ?" The answer to that is simply—there is, absolutely, none to vote. Again, there is another side to the question. We will suppose, for argument's sake, that the Council got to know that the Government were supporting hospitals and charitable societies in other towns—Auckland, for instance, to go no further. Do you not think that these wicked, wrong headed, hard-hearted Councillors might, in the duplicity of their evil hearts, fancy they were working a good work in trying to force the Government to help keep our poor and needy ? more especially as they were conscious of the dreary blackness of the Municipal exchequer. The fact ia, the whole of our laws, or absence ot laws, under which the destitute and aged are dealt with, are a disgrace to tbe country, and the real way for a journal to do good in these matters would be to advocate a comprehensive and statesmanlike enactment as early as possible.—l am, &c, Ptochois. Hastings, March 26th, 1881. [We have expunged several portions of the above letter, as they did not bear upon the subject. Our correspondent is in error in supposing tbat the money forwarded by Mr Sutton to the Charitable Aid Committee had been voted by the County Council. As chairman of the Council, Mr Sutton took upon himself the responsibility of coming to the rescue. The rest of our correspondent's letter is so much nonsense. It is ridiculous to credit the Town Council with the far-sightedness of refusing the vote for chanty on the ground that tbe Government would take the matter up. That was an afterthought, and it was only on pressure from the Charitable Aid Committee that the Mayor communicated with the Government.—Ed. D.T.]