YESTERDAY'S PARAWAI ELECTION.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4730, 5 March 1884, Page 2

YESTERDAY'S PARAWAI ELECTION.

(To the Editor of the Evening Star).

Sin, —Your contemporary has insinuated that there was a designing person connected with the above matter, but entirely forgot that another " design* ing person" iadulgesmost vehemently in invectives about the farce enacted at Parawai yesterday. That " designing person " fails to furnish the public with the information that he is the only " designing person" in the whole affair, which for the information of your readers, I shall prove. The facts are those: A combination of " designing persons/ residing within the limits of the Borough of Thames, finding their small properties becoming daily comparatively valueless, through the exodus of people, immense taxation, enormous rates, and a gigantic debt; leagued together to induce a number of simple minded people amongst them —for the purpose of increasing their population on paper, and distributing their rates, taxes, and debt, on the shoulders of a greater number of ratepayers—to join them, which, as a temporary er-. pedient, would bolster up a rotten institution, and save their own pocket. Mr VT. J. Speight, ex M.H.8., was the mouthpiece of these designing persons, and undertook to have the municipal law altered to enable those " design, ing persons " the more easily to accomplish their designs. The law was altered ap« parently to suit the designing persons, after which a petition to the Governor was prepared by a trio of them, praying that Parawai should be merged into the Borough of Thames. For this purpose, and " it'f greatly to his credit," a local disciple of iEsculapius immolated his purse on the shrine of JNoke Noke B. Mr Speight was enabled to furnish his quota, but so far as lean ascertain the third member of the party was careful in his financial movements in the affair. This Artemu3 Ward truimvirate of designing persons then enlisted the services of a faithful follower to obtain signatures to their designing emanation. Through cajolery and other means the document was numerously signed, and the unholy trinity of designing persons were jabilant over the result of their work, when a friend of the simple minded people —one of themselves—exercised his ingenious brain, and devised a means whereby a groat injustice was prevented from being perpetrated on a simple people by these "designers." Had not Mr Speight attempted to alter the law, but had left the Parawai people to their own devices, and tho Municipal Act alone, such an absurdity aa the proceedings of yesterday would not have transpired.—l am, &c.,

Pi.BA.WAI.