The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE. Equal and exact justice to all men, Of whatsoever state or persuasion, religious or political. SATURDAY, JULY 14, 1888.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2498, 14 July 1888, Page 2

The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE. Equal and exact justice to all men, Of whatsoever state or persuasion, religious or political. SATURDAY, JULY 14, 1888.

ThE Auckland Star of Tuesday pays us an unintentional compliment of a very

hi.'h order. It is not pleased with us for the pains we have taken to place before our constituents the true position of the country, in order that they may jui'ge whether they are able to support further taxation and {maintain an extravagant policy of borrowing and expenditure. In order to do this we have summarised as succinctly as possible the official returns, with their maw; of figures, which the public never see, and therefore have no other opportunity of lemiing the truth about their own affairs except what is afforded them by an honorable press in the discharge of its duty to the country. The Star, for reasons of its own, furnishes its readers with just so much information taken from tho same official sources as suits its own purposes, hut misleads the people into the belief that the colony is in a satisfactory state. The figures we gave, and to which the Star refet-3, were notie of our own invention, and in tracing back the state of our commerce aud finances for several years past, wo distinctly showed their tlnctuations, the rise and fall

in our staple exports, including the item tallow which the Star singles out, all of which we perfectly understood, but which in the aggregate- proved the retrogression of the'colony and loss of its reve. nue-raising power. The Star likens 11s to a Jeremiah with a self-imposed mission to bewail the downfall of our country. It is not very clear what this sneer of -'selfimposed" means as applied to an organ which is but one amongst many of the journalistic phalanx of the colony who have devoted themselves to securing remedies for the many administrative evils under which the country suffers. It is only such few papers as the Star, whose character is as unstable as water and may be written in sand, that seek to delude the people with hypocritical solicitude for that convenient shibboleth, "The rights of the working-man." Heaven bu praised these are not the organs of opinion! but represent that selfish class who, having drawn

us into the toils of foreign bondholders, now, for personal gains, are ready to sell their country and its resources to foreign syndicates. ' Does the Star desire to flatter us by implying that the influence of Tub Waikato Times has been so omnipotent with the Legislature and Ministry as to have been the sole agent in forcing them to continue the work of retrenchment and economy ? We are,

however, willing to share the praise with all our contemporaries in thecolony who have been assiduous in pursuit of the same line of policy we have

been following. This much we will say for ourselves, that Tun Waikato Times correctly represents public opinion in these districts, as i.sabundantly proved

by the meetings held in the chief centres ; honest meetings, let the editor of the ■Star remember, composed of sensible, bard-working settlers and not of packed partisans. The gibes and sneers of the Star to the contrary, and notwithstanding its inelegance of diction and misapplication of phras.es, we will persevere in lending our aid in the task of saving the colony from a downfall and placing it on the safe road to the bright future that is hers, when freed from the selfish influences that have overwhelmed her. Jeremiah waa a true witness and fills an immortal place in Holy Writ. We take no offence at the similitude; it is possible wo shall occupy an honourable niche in history when the Star, like the false prophets of Baal, shall have been annihilated by the wrath of outaged public opinion.