MR WHYTE AT RANGIRIRI.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 2350, 2 August 1887, Page 2

MR WHYTE AT RANGIRIRI.

TO THE EDITOR, Sir,— Although not the writer of the letter of the 23rd inst., to which Mr Brooks replies in your issue of the 30th, truth compels me to answer his statements he knows to be positively untrue. Firstly, “the meeting was a packed one." Mr Brooks, a Waipa elector, with no vote and no sympathies in Rangiriri, took the chair, and all the applause Mr Whyte received came principally from Waipa and Huntly electors. That the chairman did not take the vote of the meeting as an expression of Rangiriri feeling was not his fault, as he is bound to admit, but when the question was put to him, in spite of his partizanships, his published account shows that even he had not the effrontery to call it a representative Rangiriri political meeting. I still contend the meeting was a packed one. Secondly, “ the meeting commenced 15 minutes before time.” I beg not only to endorse this statement but to assert that it commenced 20 minutes before the advertised time. Thirdly, “ bona fide electors were unable to obtain admission.” This is utterly true. I can, for instance, give six or seven electors’ names who stood in the hall for some time and left unable to procure a seat, while others were standing all the time. Fourthly, Mr Brooks falsely asserts that the account gave 10 votes as the number recorded for confidence in Mr Whyte. Your published account of the 23rd states that Mr Whyte received 1(1 votes out of 65 present, and of these only six were Rangiriri electors, two of whom were rats. Fifthly, let me advise the chairman of the meeting to stick to the truth in future.—l am, yours truly, W. B. Lawson.