BACKSTAIRS INFLUENCE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 2039, 11 July 1885, Page 2

BACKSTAIRS INFLUENCE.

We are not given to employing the term " buck,stairs influence" any more than we are given to using the mode of procedure itself. It is, however, a favorite one with Mr Hogg, whose opponents, according to his version, are never able to do without it. Our local contemporary, too, lias repeatedly decried the reprehensible practice of doing things in a mannei other than fair and above-board. What then will the public say to the following letter J—"Star Office, Masterton, March 13,

1885.—Dear iSir, —Before going to Wellington the other day, Mr Sutton, late Sheep Inspector, gave me the memo and copies of correspondence which I inclose, I should have submitted them to you, and explained the circumatanees connected with them,but you were unfortunately absent at a meeting of tho Cabinet. Sutton is a buyer in the Gear Meat Company at present, but he feels that, owing to the way in which he was forced outoi the Sheep Department when Dick was in olhce, he is under a cloud. As you are aware, Beetham and Ruchanan used their influence against him, and got him out of his billet by preferring charges of some kind against him, which, when challenged, they were too cowardly to prospcvito. Bnylpy has apparently been thoir tool in this dirty work, for, as the inolosnre will R how, he first appointed a day for investigating the charges, and then, when Beetham and Buchanan refused to meet Sutton, made his own work by saying they had made no specific charges up to the present, Su tton has had no official inquiry, no redress, no reason assigned for taking the charge of the Wairarapa from him, and Beetham and Buchanan and their political friends are chuckling—distinctly stigmatising him in their join nals as the man with a priflvance, and saying, "now your friends are in office, and old Dick is out, what a lot they are doing to give yon redress." For my own part I am sorry I took up the case, or wrote a word in denunciation of the injustice perpetrated hy the late Colonial Secretary, at the request of the members for the district. The evident inability of the Eon P, A. Rucklev to offer the slightest redress, or cause, a fniv and impartial Pn quin' to he held with the ohjeet of compelling the thtee B.'s (Reetliam, Buchanan and Bayley) to explain the action taken against Mr Sutton, or else reinstate him, has placed me in a verv awkward fix. I am not thin-skinned, but T do not like to he virtually told, "yon can write to your heart's content in vindication of the weak, and those whose rights are trampled on, but yon are leaning on a rotten crutch if you think vour vaunted Liberal Ministry will dure to rectify their wrongs." The fact that Sutton's wrongs have not even been inquired into, and that the Reetham-Buchanan clique have been able to keep the district in the hands of their friends, the Drnmmonds, ifec.. spreading a reign of terror over the small settlers, while rabbits are multiplying in tens of thousands on the big runs, simply tends to strengthen and maintain their coercive political influence. Trusting if anything can be done in Sutton's case you will use your

influence. 1 urn, Ao,, A. W, HoGQ," The letter was addressed to Mr Stout. 'Now, had Mr Hogg written to ..the Premier in his official capacity, nobody could liave found any fault with:him. He was, however, afraid to allow daylight to fall upon his action in the matter; yet while openly denying that it was sought to make the question to which it refers a political one, he deliberately wrote to the Premier aletter, the chief object of which was to damage the political reputation of the members for the district. It should now he ascertained what instructions were given to Mr Davy with regard to the conduct of the inquiry, Ministers could scarcely object to lay thera on the table of thd House.