Poverty Bay Standard. Published Every Evening. THURSDAY, AUGUST 24, 1882.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1129, 24 August 1882, Page 2

Poverty Bay Standard. Published Every Evening. THURSDAY, AUGUST 24, 1882.

How or where the Herald became possessed of the information that £60,000 out of the £3,000,000 loan is to be allocated to the necessities of the Poverty Bay District is to us a most astounding mystery. There is a delicious haze enveloping the statement which makes it [jifp'.'inf, and really makes one wish that it were true. Who has been having a lark, with i the Editorial Conclave we don’t know, but ; it’s very evident that somebody has been bamboozling them. There is not the slightest real foundation for the statement. Poverty Bay will have to take what it can get, and no more, by dint of incessant supplication, out of the £300,C K) allocated to the whole of the North Island for public works. There has been no promise given, or inducement for hope held out by Ministers that we are to have any such sum as £69,000, nor is it probable that we shall get one single penny beyond £lO,OOO. The other divisions of the North Island will take remarkably good care that we don’t get any more than they can possibly I help, aml what we do get will be th-.own to us as a bone is thrown to a dog. To cast the

blame for this upon Mr Allan McDonald is simply unjust ami ridiculous, ami betrays a thorough want of knowledge in the financial matters now so sorely touching our intimate needs and probing our political wounds to the very core. MiMcDonald voted against the Government, not only as a party measure but because he could not see the force of our being taxed for the interest of a very large sum of money, from which we shall only derive an infinitesimal benefit. The Middle Island takes the lion’s share of the £3,000,000, leaving only a tenth portion to be applied to the pressing needs of the Northern districts of which we form a part. Mr McDonald was doubtless, ami we are thoroughly with him, unable to recognise any fairness in this allocation and taking party feeling into consideration, as he was undoubtedly bound to do, voted against the (Government. And for this he is hauled over the coals by the Herald who on the strength of a piece of bogus information, derived (God knows where, strives to depreciate the value of Mr McDonald’s Parliamentary services as being opposed to district interests. Mr McDonald can make himself easy : The very milk-and-watery quality, the absence of any direct accusation, and the tone of inuemlo permeating the whole of the article, which we can only describe as frivolous, weak, and vacillating, are his best safeguard and denial, ottering, as they do, a distinct contradiction to themselves. Sir McDonald has worked hard, and wisely and well in our interests, ami if he has not been thoroughly successful it has been to a great extent our own faults. We are indolent and cliquey, ami have not given him that furthering support to which he was and is justly entitled at our hands. He was elected by the voice of the people to sit in Parliament as their representative, and, once elected, all parties and cliques should have thrown their feeling aside, and combined to support him through thick ami thin in the general interests of the community. To abuse or depreciate an existent Member of our own electing seems to us about as weak and suicidal a policy as can possibly be adopted : even supposing him to be really deserving of course, which we thoroughly deny, the administration of such censure would be a matter for very grave consideration : but so far as ’natters have hitherto gone we cannot but think that Mi - McDonald has fulfilled his pledges to the letter, ami also the spirit. In nothing does he deserve the attack made upon him in the columns of last night's Hr raid , which, but for the fact that such a milk-and-watery, child’s-pappy attempt at censure necessarily converts itself de facto into praise, might seriously damage him ami detract from his mor.il weight in matters Parliamentary. As it is he is to be congratulated : to receive such censure from such hands only serves to convince sensible men that he has thoroughly performed his duty as our representative.