MR BALFOUR AND MISS HELEN TAYLOR.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2739, 1 February 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

MR BALFOUR AND MISS HELEN TAYLOR.

Mr Geokge Wyndiiam, private secretary to Mr A. J. Balfour, writing to a gentleman ab Ramsbottom, say3:—"Mr Balfour has desired me to reply to your letter, in which you enclose a report furnished by a local paper of a lecture delivered by Miss Helen Taylor. You urge that the statements of the lecturer cannot fail, if uncontradicted, to prejudice the Unionist cause by casting reflections upon the administration of the law under Mr Balfour's raj line. I anticipate no such result, for I find, on studying the passage you have marked, that the event 3 there related at length are not to be referred to recent times. The error into which you, and doubtless the rest of tho audience, have fallen is, I admit, a very natural one, since Miss Taylor omitted altogether to mention the fact that the two women whose death she deplores met thoir fate at Belmullett on the 21st of October, 1881. No women have died of wounds inflicted by the police since the present Government came iuto office. It is, therefore, from a party point of view, wholly unnecessary for mo to defend tho action of the police on this occasion, since Mr Gladstone and those who held office under him are, in bo far as any Government is responsible for the action of its subordinates in this respect, alone concerned. Having, however, a reliable account of the facts before me, I sm constrained by common charity to declare that Miss Taylor's version of the matter is altogether inaccurate. The police were not armed with a new bayonet ' sharpened on both sides and at the point.' They were provided, as might have been expected, with the ordinary regulation weapon. No policeman entered a hut and then stabbed a woman. Both these unfortunate women, as a matter of fact, succumbed to the fire of police—a serious step, but only, I should add, adopted by the latter as a last resource in order to defend their lives against the repeated assaults of a crowd numbering about 500 persons.armed in part with stones and in part with reaping-hooks. The authentic aecount of this almost forgotten incident, which I am fortunately able to offer you, will strike most people as the more reasonable, charitable, and probably of the two. It will even, I am disposed to hope, be accepted by some of the advocates of Home Rule—not, I need hardly point out, to anyone unacquainted with their canons of belief, because of the apparent probability, but because its acceptance is necessary in order to exculpate the Government of Mr Gladstone, and its rejection of no avail to discredit that of Lord Salisbury."