New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, October 29, 1851.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 651, 29 October 1851, Page 2

New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, October 29, 1851.

In last Wednesday’s Independent is published what the Editor of that paper designates a protest from the Hutt settlers against the formation of a Municipality in that district, and on which he endeavours to confer additional importance bysomeprefaratory observations, in which his chief object seems to be to crowd into a given space the greatest number of misrepresentations, so as to mislead the thoughtless and unwary. Some of these misrepresentations have been ably exposed by our intelligent correspondent from the Hutt, and we shall shortly advert to a few of the circumstances connected with the protest, which may sene to put it in a proper light before our readers. The Independent affects to sneer at the public meeting at which the Corporation was accepted by the Hutt settlers, asserting that “some thirty hands were held up inits favour, and about seventeen against it; the majority present having abstained from voting.” This is notoriously untrue, the meeting referred to took place after every possible publicity was given of the time, place, and objects of the meeting, and^ 3 most numerously attended. When the question was finally put, every person sent took part in its decision, those in h' vour of a Corporation—an overwhelm' 11 ? majority—going to one side of the roomand its opponents —seventeen in number—to the other. So far everything was done openly, publicly, fairly. But whence comes this protest; —from what obscure hole or corner has it been dragged into existence, who fathers this spurious bantling “To whom related, or by whom begot. Surely if it represented the opinions of t majority of the Hutt settlers, or even o respectable portion of them, it wool a been adopted in the usual way at ap u meeting. But nothing of the sort, al * is known about the protest is, tbatJVbeen industriously handed about the a ' and all sorts of signatures have b een tained under all sorts of pretences. very first sentence, to the effect tia signers of the protest were not awar the meeting above alluded to hadbeenc J —is not only untrue, but was not

protest handed round for signature having, as we are informed, been erased, and after the signatures were obtained having been dishonestly added to it in the printed version, so that some of the seventeen are made to declare their utter ignorance of a meeting at which -they attended and took an active part, and are thus placed in a most humiliating position. Many of the names attached to the document are not known in the District, several boys under age have been induced ta sign to fill up the list, some names of persons are reported to have been added without their knowledge or consent, many signing have no property in the valley,- —are not settlers, —in short out of two hundred and six Hutt settlers, whose names are on the Jury List not fifty are to be found attached to this Document, and the whole affair is viewed as a fraud and forgery by the majority of the Inhabitants of the' District. After all the exertion that has ■ been made, after all the arts that have been used, after all the secret and indirect influence that has been set to work this is the result. Of course it is plain that those who have not signed, that the great majority of the settlers repudiate the protest, and this the concoctors of it are perfectly aware of, for if there had been the slightest chance of carrying it by the Public voice they would have tried their fortune at a Public Meeting.