MB BAILEY AND PROHIBITION.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 123, 23 November 1896, Page 2

MB BAILEY AND PROHIBITION.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— l am surprised »t the attitude of Mr Bailey on the Prohibition question —as per your Cheltenham report and Mr W. F. Jacob's letter. I must insist that Mr Bailey was correctly reported in the Marton Advocate, otherwise I should never have retired from the contest. Fortunately, I did not see Mr Bailey alone but Messrs Cocker, Shearer, and Andrew with shorthand notes, will be fully able to corroborate my statement. I have all along since then acted loyally to Mr Bailey. In good faith I took the chair at his Apiti meeting and joined his committee. I was suspicions of Mr Railey and wished to leave the chair in order to publicly satisfy myself, but Mr Bailey's friends and himself opposed my so doing and I agreed to waire mj right. But, so soon as the meeting was over, I privately questioned the candidate and asked had he departed from the term of our interview as to National Option, &c. Mr Bailey's answer was an emphatic " No." Sir, at this late hour it is impossible for me to now contest the electorate. I think, sir, that even Mr Bailey's friend 9 mast admit that he has, to pat it mildly, shown himself wanting in that which every Englishman cherishes — namely, an honorable sense of fairplay. Sir, I assume in this, that Mr Bailey is correctly reported this time, that being so I must say that, in my opinion, he having altered his opinions at the eleventh hour on a matter which kept another 1 candidate out of the field, and was also a matter of argument between them, he has no other course open to him than to retire from the contest, otherwise I must ask every self-respecting member of Mr Bailey's various committees to at once resign from same in the interests of political honor. I am, Ac., HaBBY TOIiLEY.