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Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2720, 4 November 1871, Page 2

THE BROGDEN CONTRACTS. The treasurer, in his statement on Tues« day evening last, is reported to have said th it the public opposition to the contracts was “a storm in a tea pot, originated in Canterbury by political opponents, apd fomented by gross misrepresentations and mendacious statements.’’ At least one por» tion of the remark just quoted is correct, whatever may be thought of the others—the agitation against the contracts was originated in Canterbury, and the public were first appealed to on the subject through the columns of the Press, which would no doubt feel itself injured, perhaps insulted, if it were described in any other terms than as a , political opponent of the [Government, and especially of Mr Vogel. We leave our contemporary to settle that with that gentleman the question about gross misrepresentations and mendacious statements. The agitation itself, however, is an undeniable fact. It took the shape of an almost daily article in the columns of the Preis for a space of four or five weeks'; of an abortive attempt by Mf E. C. J. Stevens to get a condemnatory re« solution passed at a meeting which had been expressly called for quite a different purpose ; of a thinly attended public meeting convened by the Mayor to consider the contracts, and finally of a petition to the House of .Representatives, which was signed by—at the outside—eleven hundred people out of ah available population 6f at lealst twelve thousand. ' The’ Mayors’of Lyttelton, Kaiapoi, and Timaru, were invited to poi operate in the movement, No response that we are aware of came from Lyttelton ; an attempt to get up a public meeting at Kaiapoi ended in something like a trarestie ; and Timaru got together about fifty people to condemn the contracts, afterwards sending a petition against them to which two hundred and fifty names arc attached. So far, wo have shown how the agitation originated in Canterbury, mid how it resulted, and we think it must be admitted that there was no general movement on the part of the great body of the people. If the feeling against the contracts had been very or even n.qdpiately strong, the Cjiristchprch petition would have been signed, nqt by eleven hundred, but by five thousand. If the Province as a whole had felt that the contracts were so very bad, there would have been a public meeting in every centre of nopulation, and the petitions sent up to the House would have been counted by the Hoztii.-~LyHcUm Turn.