Poverty Bay Standard. Published Every Evening. GISBORNE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1882.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1177, 17 October 1882, Page 2

Poverty Bay Standard. Published Every Evening. GISBORNE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1882.

The Chairman of the Wairoa Comity Council has got considerably mixed up. By a telegram to the Poverty Bay Herald yesterday, from tlicir Wairoa correspondent, it is stated that at a meeting of tho Council on Saturday last, when the item of £7OOO for the Opotiki-Mohaka road was brought under consideration, a letter was read from Mr Allan McDonald, M.H.8., stating that £34000 had been placed on the estimates for the constriuiticHi of lOaila and bridges on th. East Coast Electoral district. Wc are in a position to thoroughly endorse the correctness of this statement, fur on reference to our fllee of the 13th ult., wo find an extract culled from the Public Work’s Estimates, extracted by Mr J. WaBBKN, the Clerk to the Cook County Council, giving the figures as they are set forth in those estimates. Curiously enough Mr Allan McDonald, when forwarding to this attire a copy of thosc-entiiuato*. took the trouble to forward a copy also to the Wairoa County I‘uuueil, no the ignorance displayed by the Chairman of that liody is singular and astonishing, 'fhe Chairman, whether in joke or in dry and caustic satire, we are as yet unable to judge, makes the somewhat startling assertion that he has seen Mr Rollestu.n on the subject, who knew nothing whatever of such a sum being voted for the - purpose indicated. Now this seems veryfunny. We can only conclude that Mr Roixestos really did not know anything about it; that is to say was not sufficiently acquainted with the Estimates to give an affirmative reply, which as he is neither a Northern member nor Minister for Works is tnore than probable, or that he was having

a little lark at the worthy chairman’s ex- | pensc. Or perhaps, Quien sabe the Chairman has been letting off a little goak of his own. County Council meetings as a rule are somewhat dry and a larky Chairman can diversify the proceedings very pleasantly. If the County Council were run in shares we should say he was practising the art of “ bulling and bearing,” in fact rigging the market, but with such a stupendously solid body as a County Council naturally is, we recognise the impossibility of such operations. It must be that Mr RollestoN was larkiug, or stay I Eureka !we have it! He was bored. That's what was the matter with the hon. gentleman, and he thought he’d pay the deputation from Wairoa County who waited upon him in regard to these pertinent matters, a Roland for their Oliver. But that the Chairman never thought of referring to the Estimates seems to us not the least curious part of the matter. Why, with such means of contradiction at his immediate command, the Chairman of the Council allowed such a statement to be flashed along the wires fiom one end of the Colony to the other certainly appears to us to be a most extraordinary thing. That it cannot be true in its entirety is cerI tain, and the motive actuating the sender of

it is inexplicable. However, the result is easily summed up in a few words, and few though they be they are words which demand attention and carry weight. Mr. Allan McDonald’s letter to the Wairoa County Council stating that £34,000 had been placed on the Estimates for the East Coast roads was correct, and is corroborated by the Pub--lie Works Estimates as brought down by the Hon. Walter Johnston, a copy of which was supplied to the Wairoa County Council by Mr. Allan McDonald, M.H.R., some weeks back, while the statement appearing as a telegram from the Wairoa correspondent of the 41 Poverty Bay Herald ” is misleading in its intention and untrue as to its substance, and as a whole is mischievous and calculated to produce false and erroneous impressions. We refer our readers to our files of the 13th of September, for the true position of affairs. Press telegraphic wires are not intended to be the medium of silly falsehoods. Verb. sap.