MR RHODES’ MEETING.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2057, 10 June 1890, Page 2

MR RHODES’ MEETING.

TO THE EDITOR,

Sir,— l fully agree with your editorial m to-day’s issue on Mr Rhodes’ meeting. It is astonishing how a man could say so much about nothing, or how an audience could listen so patiently to such a long speech that conveyed so little information. But it was evident they did not want information, as was shown by their refusal to allow Mr Badham’s pertinent question to be answered. If, as the questioner eu gg6 o ted, we are mostly represented by loafers, does it not naturally follow that our laws will, be of a hindmost favorable to loafers? And is this not borne out by the scant encouragement there is for labor and the starvation wages laborers receive ? If men don’t want information, Mr Rhodes is not to blame for hot thrusting it on them. However little he may know about politics, he certainly knows how to gauge the capacity of the gaping crowd. He has played, his cards well with them since they made him a legislator. When proposing a vote of thanks and confidence, Mr Talbot was at great pains to remind them how get-at-able and attentive and generous he had been to all our local bazaars, and the like. According to Mr Talbot he (Mr Rhodes) must be a jolly good fellow, which I will not seek,to deny; but I want Mr Talbot, or someone else, to tell me what his being a jolly good fellow has to do with his efficiency or inefficiency as a legislator. A man might be a jolly good fellow and a good lawyer, or he might be a jolly good fellow and no lawyer at all; a man might be a jolly good fellow and a good farmer, or he might be a jolly good following and know nothing about farming; and so on. When seeking election, Mr Rhodes frankly told his audience at Hilton that he knew very little about politics, [ believed at the time that that was true, and having watched his career I am confirmed in that belief. I don’t know whether Mr Talbot meant to be sarcastic when he said Mr Rhodes’ political conduct was in accord with the opinions of a majority of his constituents; but, knowing that Mr Rhodes is only a political cipher, I thought it was a polite way of telling us that a majority of the men in this district are only ciphers. Be that as it may, if we are to continue confiding in such blind leaders of the blind they will lead us over a precipice into the gulf of national ruin. The fact of so many of our young men emigrating to other parts is a certain sign that we are tottering on the brink of that precipice. We may be unable to see the cause. A child may not know that if it put its finger in the fire that it will get burned, but if it put its finger in the fire it will get burned nil l.be j a dip:. .11 vu> continue hfdm; governed a* we *re being governed’, working mm will be worse off than they are yet, union or no union, and all other sorts of men too. George Edgeler can say be likes.—l am, etc., ’ Working Man.