Sic Transit

Feilding Star, Volume VII, Issue 2, 16 June 1885, Page 3

Sic Transit

Westoe has passed from tke possession ef the great colonial ape«ile of total j abstinence, into the occupation of|a ?üblieaa. What a fall ing- off is here! he shrine is desecrated, the patron saint, for filthy lucre, has allowed the unclean unbeliever to become the possessor of tho sacred groves which have hitherto been consecrated to the mysteries ef Good Templar-fas. A publican reigns where the prophet and apostle stood, and the money which the.fnqnmmade out of " the blood, the misery,"-he- degradation, the very lives'*, of the people around Westoe and Bulls (we quote the Knight .of Westee's expressions) is now transferred to the pockets of' Sir \7illiam Fox to be epent in England, for we presume that, having sold liis property, he doe* not intend to return to the colony as a permanent resident.* We wonder that he should have- touched a penny gained in the traffic -he has ever denounced se atrongly. A After all, however, there is probably no more inconsistency is selling Westee^bodily to a publican that in nsing its soil to grow barley te be made into malt for brewing purposes. Westoe was at one time, we believe, rather celebrated for its barley. There is a certain; grim irony in the fact of Sir William fox being succeeded as Lord of the Manor,ef Westoe by a publican.— P«»». .