MR SAUNDERS M.H.R. AND THE LYTTELTON TIMES.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume II, Issue 168, 29 October 1880, Page 3

MR SAUNDERS M.H.R. AND THE LYTTELTON TIMES.

Mr Saunders has addressed the following letter to the Lyttelton Tim##: — Sir,—l have not the slighest objection to being made use of as-a-safely-value for your specially bilious hours, or to act, as I have long done, as a red rag to call out the powers of invention and misrepresentation so largely possessed by your reporters and correspondents, though I am often at a loss to understand how such an extremely insignificant person can so long have retained his power in these capacities. I now, however, wish to call your attention to the fact, that by inventing such a speech as the last you have attributed to me, you have done exactly what you try to blame me for having done, and wherever your paper goes, it should make your readers believe that such a mischievous speech has been delivered by some public man in New Zealand. You had never heard the speech, nor seen any report of it at the time you wrote, and you were certainly very unsuccessful in guessing at what I had said, as the two hours’ speech did not contain the word repudiation, nor a word about it. There was no confession of having gone in on the “Grey ticket,” which you would have so well known to be untrue ; and my constitutents wanted no excuse for my not supporting that Government, though they would have wanted a very strong one if I had done so, and your inventions about the Ministers are about the opposite of what I said.

It is a pity that the bile did not come over you a few days later, when you could no doubt have found something that I really did say deserving your censure. I have long learned to expect no semblance of justice or fair play from the Lyttelton Timex, and to take no notice of its misrepresentations if I happen to see them. Nor woidd I ask you to imitate the usage of respectable journals so far as to give your readers an opportunity to see my speeches for themselves, instead of your utterly false versions of them ; but in your own interest I should have thought it better that you should at least see them yourself, and that before you write about them.—l am, &c., Alfred Saunders.