THE PROPOSED BOROUGH OF TEMUKA.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1157, 6 October 1883, Page 3

THE PROPOSED BOROUGH OF TEMUKA.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—l see Mr Quinn championed the cause of the people of the town manfully last Board day. It is to be hoped the people will not forget him for it. It would appear that Mr Talbot waited to bully him into silence. lam inclined to think Mr Quinn is made of the wrong sort of material to be frightened. Mr Talbot challenged him to prove that either he or the clerk had anytffing to do with the counter petition. Let us now see what the evidence is. First, the proposal re the Borough has been before the public for about five months, and • no one offered the slightest opposition to it until the letter of the Colonial Secretary came to the Road Board. This fact shows that the people had settled down into acquiesence with the town being constituted a Borough. All at once the matter was taken up, and by whom ? The very men who are immediately employed by the Board! These men possessed certain information. When you met Mr Hobbs taking the petition round, his first argument was ‘Look at Wairaate!’ and then he would regale you with an astonishing amount of information concerning municipal matters in that town. Where did Mr Hobbs get his information about Waimate? That looks blue for somebody. Where.did we get our Inspector of Nuisances from who is Mr Hobbs’s superior officer ? These are two links in the chain of evidence nicely connected. Mr Hobbs also knew that the Borough would be proclaimed on .the 17th October if no counter petition were lodged. Ihe Clerk of the Road Board got a letter from Wellington containing that information. That officer is the Inspector of Nuisances, 1 and the Inspector of Nuisances is Mr Hobbs’s superior officer. It is astonishing how these facts dovetail into each other. It is held that the way Mr Hobbs found out the contents of the Colonial Secretary’s letter was this : Whilst engaged in his usual occupation one night at the rear of the Road Board office, it turned up amongst other rubbish, and he read it and then returned it to the Board’s officer. Now, I do not believe that. 1 would rather stick to my own opinion. Another remarkable fact is that the Inspector of Nuisances is making a regular nuisance of himself at the Post Office corner since these matters came to light. He buttonholes every man that he meets, and tries to make him swallow that he had nothing to do with the matter. Yesterday I was under the doctor’s care, and he kept me too long. J had actually to tear myself away because I was in a hurry, but of course I said I believed him. I cannot understand wliy he should be so anxious that people should believe him, unless it is that he thinks he ought not, as the paid servant of the people, to run counter to their dearest wishes, and that the letter containing ‘ the important information ’ ought to have been kept private. Of course I would not say tne Clerk of the Board had anything to do witli the majiber, but if he had 1 fancy lie must have been the Jiuipble instrument of a higher power. I know that the Chairman of the Temnka Road Board had offered extraordinary opposition to the Borough ; that in addition to what he did locally he wrote to Wellington to a certain M.H.R., asking him to use his influence against the Borough, and that tha M-H.R. refused to do so. The Chairman denied that lip had anything to do with the petition, and only for I should bo inclined to think that the spirit of opposition transmigrated from the ! Chairman to the Clerk, from the Clerk to the Inspector of Nuisances, and from the Inspector of Nuisances to the past and , present Nightman, till it permeated i through the bovine portion of our social system. But the Chairman and the Clerk deny that, and so the thing remains a dark and dirty mystery. If the case had r beep hgapi before Judge Johnston this u ' the way fye would have ijurpmotf it t}P for f 1 the j ary ‘ Proved that there ip a Road

Board Chairman ; proved that this Chairman unreasonably opposed the Borough. Proved that there is a Clerk of the Road Board, and an Inspector of Nuisances, that these offices are amalgamated, and that both are held by one individual ; proved that this individual as well as the Chairman had access to the Colonial Secretary’s letter ; proved that it was the Nightman (who is under the Inspector of Nuisances) got up the petition ; proved that the Nightman knew the contents of the Colonial Secretary’s letter.’ Jury, without leaving their seats, ‘ Guilty, your Honor.’ Great cheering in Court. Public feeling endorses the verdict. —Yours, etc., Truthful James. Temuka, Oct, 5, 1883.