The Wairarapa Daily. FRIDAY, MARCH 14, 1884. THE COUNTY SUSPENSION PETITION.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 6, Issue 1634, 14 March 1884, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. FRIDAY, MARCH 14, 1884. THE COUNTY SUSPENSION PETITION.

TiiE report of the Council on the county suspension petition, which appears in another column, will be received with a considerable amount of consternation and dismay by the! - leaders cf the suspension movement. :. They made certain that 'it was a valid '. document, and spared no pains to make j it ut statutory suspender. They took . it for'granted that the county'was ] killed, and bewan to., make their little. ,] arrangements for tho time Svheh road ] .boards stepped into its shoes; ..The I scrutiny to which the petition has been J submitted, however, reveals a whole } host of faults, Some of them are technical and even • trivial in their ' character, but others are more serious. ( 'As far as we can judge, the petition ■} does not comply with the Statuto I sufficiently for effect to be given, to if | by the Government. Of course the ] promoters of the petition will have their opportunity of sustaining the 8 names to which objections are raised, and the question of the,fate of the » petition is still an open one. We J regard the fight as a fair one. The [ county suspenders have done their best V and the county supporters are also t doing all they fairly can. Both sides J can afford to wait good humouredly n the issue. We observed yesterday d that Mr Meredith spoke on the ques- * tion with undue warmth. He styled the I report of the Public Works committee ut as onesided and inaccurate. Mr Mere- n MTH has an opportunity to detect all el inaccuracies, and when lie has availed « himself of it he will be in a belter | position to prove his assertion as to * tho incorrectness of the report. As ?| to the onesidedness, what, may w we ask, was the business of the tl committee? Was it not to detect hi errors 1 No doubt if the committee *' had relegated the scrutiny''to Mr Jf Meredith, no error ■of a material 5 character would have been discovered! H When this committee ijwas first ap-jjf

pointed we indicated Hie absurdity of .Mr Meredith, being Solved nwiutiniie;his own petition. .Mr Meredith has placed'himself in a: false position ; [by endeavoring to prejudice a full inveatigfttion o£ the petition. He should have/ been content to wait till his turn came to review the scrutiny. It is clear that the scrutiny is almost a checkmate to. the suspension petition, but even if iifescapes' this danger there are others to follow, In any case the county has some months of existence before it, and we yet hope to see some rational agreement beforo the county and anti-county parties which will consorve the, interests of this district as a whole, and yet meet the reasonable demands of dissatisfled ratepayers.