LARRIKINISM : HOW IT IS ENCOURAGED.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 226, 19 October 1876, Page 2

LARRIKINISM : HOW IT IS ENCOURAGED.

To thb Editor op the 'Evening Mail.' Sir— l see that, as I anticipated, my remarks on the pernicious system of calling out the cadets at night and then turning them loose in the streets has evoked a reply from a correspondent of your morning contemporary, but if he could find nothing better to »ay he would have acted more wisely in holding his peace. He has not brought forward a single argument against anything I said, but has made a furious onslaught on what I did not say. " Observant Citizen," he says, "gives the cadet corps credit for the whole of the blackguardism that takes place in Nelson;" and again, " I oan hardly conceive any man calmly stating that the cause of larrikinism in Nelson is solely due to the cadets." No more cq,n I, my gallant "Volunteer," hut has anyone made such a statement ? I most certainly did not; I never meant it; I never even thought it. As it is clear that this " Volunteer" has not read the letter he has attempted to answer, perhaps he will allow me to pftll his attention to the exact words I made use of. They wore;—" I have reason to believe that there is one fruitful, if unsuspected, source of larrikinism iv our midst," and I then went on to state that I alluded to the system of calling out the cadets at night. Surely there is a wide difference between this and attributing the wjple of the blackguardism in Nelson to my pritje's young friends. He asks me at what tjme the Juvenile Order of Good Templars meet, Well, lam sorry to say lam not in a position to give him the desiped information, but if he means to infer that they too meet at night and are turned adrift to do what seemeth good to them, then I give him credit for having brought to light another fruitful source of larrikinism. But two blacks do not make one white, and " Volunteer" must find some other ground upon which to de fend the system I have attacked than that of asserting that there are others equally bad in eaastence in the place. — I am, &c;,' % An Observant CiTizgjj. October 19, 1876.