POLITICAL.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 2973, 15 May 1893, Page 2

POLITICAL.

[PKR PRESS ASSOCIATION]

Wellington, May 15. The polling in the Inangahua election has been fixed for June 8.

Sir Robert Stout writes as follows te the '* Otago Daily Times " : - gl ß) __ln. vyour issue of the 9th inst. there appeared the following sentence said to have been spoken by the Hon. Mr Rolleston (the leader of the Opposition) to your reporter —viz : "I cannot understand how Sir R. Stout should have allowed the rumors affecting himself— soma of them of a character I hardly like to think of—to remain the subject of general discussion." Not having read the Otago Conservative journals in my absence inthe north, I did not know to what the Hon. Mr Rolleston referred. I applied to him to know, and hs has courteously answered my letter, and sayd: .*.' The special rumour'to which I referred as one I did not like to things: of was that relating to the w^sh said to have been expressed by the late Premier as to your succeeding him in the Premiership, a wish which, if ife were expressed, could scarcely have been intended to be made use of as affecting the political position, and Which, under the circumstances, should not, I think, have been allowed to have circulation;" It really seems to me that the Hon. Mr Rolleston's action in characterising such a rumor as one of such a character that he hardly liked to " think of," is beneath criticism. Ifc is another i'lustration of how far political bias will sometimes blind most honorable gentlemen. —I am, etc., Robert Stout. Punedin, May 12.