CORRESPONDENCE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1551, 4 December 1883, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

-—_l~ To the Edit jk, . Sir,—Mr Buchanan ib hard to please, He appeals to Hansard, and when I I take him before his own chosen judge and he is condemned he complains of my doing so, As to the rest of his letter nothing I can say is needed to color the picture lie has drawn of himself sitting during the most important division of tho session in complacent forgetfulness that he had paired with Mr Mitchelson till he is locked in, and by a cruel inexorable law compelled to save by his own voto the Government ho so " strongly opposed" on this question. The misquotation I charged him with he admits, saying that he did it " to save your space and his own time:" It is curious that had he quoted me accurately he would have saved your space by four words, and would have saved his own valuable time in inventing those four words which altered the I entire sense of what I said, By the insertion before the words "Mr George" of the words "the Atkinson Ministry following" he made me attribute to the Ministry a proposal which I did not attribute to the Ministry, but to'Mr George. lam extremely sorry that Mr Buchanan has compelled me to drive him thus into a corner. Had he written with less acrimony at first, and had lie had the courage openly and frankly to admit the mistake he ha.d made, or simply said thathe hadsurrendered his private judgment to the exigencies of his party he would have found no more generous opponent than myfielf. If he would take to heart the lesson of our passage-of-arms he may yet render good service to his constituents and the colony, and gain the object of his just ambition. Of crooked politics, and crooked politicians the colony has already had too much I am, ike, Robert S. Hawkins.