PUBLIC OPINION.

Patea Mail, 18 November 1881, Page 4

PUBLIC OPINION.

Contributions, Letters, Inquiries and Answers thereto, are invited on Farming. Commerce, Politics, and matters of interest to the Patea district. Names of writers need not be printed. A HUTCHISON FACT . I have just been reading in your issue of 11th November a long letter from Mr Hutchison, in which he tries to convince the electors of Egmont that certain statements of Major Atkinson’s are not according to fact. He winds up his letter with this startling question ; 11 For is it not a fact that the so-called Carlyle, New Plymouth, and Waitara railway is finished in the Taranaki district, and is scarcely more than begun in the Egmont district ?” I will answer this question for him—No ; it is not a fact. The fact is that the distance by road from New Plymouth to Hawera is 44 miles, Midhurst being situated just half-way, viz., 22 miles from each ; and the dividing line between the Taranaki (late Grey and Bel!) electoral district and that of Egmont cuts through the Midhurst township ; so that the 22 miles from Midhurst to Hawera now open for traffic is all in the Egmont district. Take the Patea section and the work done on the line about Kakaramea and Manutahi, and the various surveys, &c., as a set-off against the short and inexpensive branch from Sentry Hill to Waitarn, and the two districts will be found to have been pretty equally served, not to mention the ■ contracts about to be let from Patea southwards and from Hawera to Manutahi. The Wanganui factraonger should learn the boundaries of an electoral district before he aspires to represent it in Parliament, of which he has a poor chance this trip. There are scores of free and independent Egmont electors in and around New Plymouth anxiously awaiting the meeting of the Wanganui candidate in this town ; even Mr Sherwood bad pluck enough to meet the electors here when a candidate. Truth, New Plymouth, Nov. 14.