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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume I, Issue 3, 18 July 1861, Page 3

To the Editor of the Ha wke's JBay Times. Sir, —In your report of the proceedings at the declaration of the poll, you have published Mr. Colenso’s speech, but omitted the few words I said hi reply, and I therefore beg you will afford me space for a short commentary on those parts in which he alludes to myself. Not seeing a reporter present, I spoke very briefly, as I thought the few persons there assembled would take Mr. Colenso’s remarks at their fair value ; had I known that gentleman would furnish his speech to the newspapers, I should have replied rather more fully and taken the same precaution. I may pass over the flourish of trumpets which occupies a considerable item of the oration. The speaker might have been contented with his majority, without any boast of -what it might have been under some impossible circumstances. He, whose whole attention for nearly three years has been directed to his political advancement, who has appeared on the hustings at almost every election, beat by seventeen votes an opponent who for the same period has almost held aloof from political affairs, and who only came forward at the very hour of nomination, when several of his friends had promised their votes to a third candidate. What a triumph ! Mr. Colenso (who never hides his light under a bushel) favoured us with an edifying dissertation on the science of optics; sifting the idea out of the mass of words in which it was entangled, it amounted to this: that I had looked back with a political telescope, and distorted and magnified his conduct in February, 1858, when he spoke against separation. I did not distort or magnify, because I only quoted the words as reported in the Herald at the time ; and I would ask, in reference to this political telescope which Mr. Colenso so much objects to, what better means can we have of judging what will be a man’s future political career than by examining his past conduct ? As you cannot point the telescope forward, the next best thing is to point it back. True, I might have found abundant subjects for criticism without going back to 1858, but I chose that which was most appropriate to the matter then under discussion. On what do we principally found our claim to be absolved from the Wellington debt ? Upon the injustice of Wellington towards us when that debt was incurred in withholding our share of the principal, and abstracting our land revenue in defiance of our remonstrances. If the settlers of Hawke’s Bay bad been passive all that time, could they complain of the injustice now ? The Settlers Association was hard at work opposing the acts of the

Wellington Government ; but where was Mr. Golenso ? Will not the political telescope be used against him in Auckland, if he has there to argue our cause ? Will not Dr. Featherston and Mr. Fox remind him that when this money was raised and appropriated by Wellington, that he, Mr. Golenso, was on their side,—-that he thought there was no occasion for separation,—that Dr. Featherston had made liberal promises,—and that the Wellington Deform Association had promised to set every thing to rights if we would only give them a trial, &e. (vide Herald, I eb. 6th, 1858) ? Of what avail will it be to him to reply, all this is true, but “ I have apologised over and over again I thought you were in the right, then, but since we have set up for ourselves in Hawke's Bay I have seen my error and repented ? Probably Mr. Golenso■willbespared this painful scene,for since the departure of the Sydney brig, (which sailed the sixth day after the poll), there seems little chance that he will be in Auckland much before the end of the session. The last point I will allude to iu the speech as directed against myself, is Mr. Colenso’s very amusing defence of Rowdyism. Requite forgot his rhinosceros hide, and displayed great indignation, when, at the public meeting, I made a slight allusion to a passage in his biography, though the allusion was strictly relevant to the subject I was discussing ; but if I; or my friends, had invented anything of the kind, and posted it in broad type over the town, oh ! that would only have been legitimate electioneering. He is right to some extent, for truth often cuts sharper than falsehood. In exchange for his advice, I would say to him, “ Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.” Mr. Golenso may cry Hurrah for Rowdyism, “dead cats,” “rotten eggs,” and slander, but it argues rather a moral obtuseness to justify the latter, and place it in the same category with the former. Has Mr. Golenso forgotten the somewhat Pecksniffian use he made of the litany some few months since, when writing against Mr. Worgan (Herald, Jan. 19, 1861) ? and is he aware that his present argument amounts to an assertion that during elections the ninth commandment may be, and ought to be, suspended, in compliance with a peculiar privilege which I learn for the first time “Englishmen” derived from their “forefathers” ? I am, &c., H. P>. Sealy. Napier, July 15, 1861.