“No Partizan” Talks Squarely to the “Times.”

Year
1887
Month
2
Day
10
Article Title
“No Partizan” Talks Squarely to the “Times.”
Author
No Partizan
Page Number
3
Article Type
Language
Article Contents
“No Partizan” Talks Squarely to the “Times.” MR. EDITOR, -- the editor of the Daily Times says that “a professing christian and a member of the Baptist Church” has been writing against bribery and corruption at elections. Well, we must say that writing against bribery and corruption at elections is very proper work for all christians to engage in, be they Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Wesleyans, or Baptists, and I should not be surprised that if viewing the effect of bribery and corruption, all christians should raise their voices against it, from the pulpit, the platform, and the press. Bribery and corruption in Canada is fast sapping the foundation of christian society, and unless the flood-tide of this debasing evil be stayed, our future will be as deplorable as that of Sodom and Babylon. I wrote the letter referred to by the Times in defence of a christian minster, who the Conservatives of this place were reporting had been hired to come here and preach a political sermon in the interest of Mr. Emmerson. I felt called on to defend a christian minister, who is above suspicion, and whose life has been pure and upright, and who is now standing on the brink of what will be an honored grave. As an intimate friend of the minister assailed, I felt it is my duty to defend him in the most public manner. Like myself, David Lawson, save and except in common with his fellow-citizens, has nothing to gain and nothing to lose by the result of the coming contest. Like myself he has no favors to ask, because he wants none, from Grit or Tory. Like myself he knew that Mr. Emmerson had in the most public manner pledged himself against bribery and corruption, and as Mr. Emmerson had entered the political arena for the first time, none of the errors of omission or commission of others in the past could be laid to his charge. Mr. Wood, on the contrary, as the Times admits, “spent money in 1882,” and Mr. Wood has given the christian electors of Westmorland no assurance that he will not spend money in 1887. He has had ample opportunity to give the honest electors of this county a pledge that he too will run this election without bribery and corruption. If he will give them that assurance they will forgive him his sins of 1882, and ministers will speak of his determination with approval from the pulpit, and all moral men will applaud his determination. Accepting the challenge of the Times, I will now prove that the Liberal-Conservatives have declared through the press that an election cannot be run without bribery and corruption. I need not stop to prove that the Times is a Conservative paper, for even prone as that paper is to deny everything, it will scarcely deny that. It will not be necessary to collate all the ridicule and sneers it has contained when speaking of Mr. Emmerson’s purity declaration, as they are yet in the memory of all its readers. It will be sufficient for my purpose to say that those sneers and that ridicule are declarations that an election cannot be run without bribery and corruption. Each Conservative paper in the province has in turn sneered at Mr. Emmerson’s purity declaration, and treated it as something utopian. No Conservative paper has, that I know of, ventured to say, that a single Conservative candidate has expressed his determination to run a pure election. The Times and the Sun have again and again spoken of Mr. Wood’s, Mr. Baird’s, Mr. Temple’s wealth, and the wealth of other Conservative candidates. Why have these papers taken into consideration the wealth of these men, unless it was to declare that they had ample means to purchase their elections. It was not necessary to say in the exact words I used, that an election cannot be run without bribery and corruption, but who can deny that the declaration is contained in every sentence in which Mr. Emmerson’s purity declaration is ridiculed, and sneered at, and in every sentence in which the Conservative candidates are held up as men of wealth. Let us prove even from the article in which the Times refers to my communication that it in effect declares that an election cannot be run without bribery and corruption. He says that in Westmorland bribery has been reduced to a science, and “that many of the electors look for money as a regular thing;” “that both parties spent money in 1882,” which is admitting that Mr. Wood purchased his election by out-bidding his opponent, and that he owed his success to the number of men he was able to corrupt and degrade. The Times knows it is not stating the truth when it says the Conservatives in Westmorland ran a pure election in 1878. The Conservative candidate in that election went into the contest “as solvent as any bank in the Dominion,” and came out of it insolvent. Who got the money? I have proved I think to the satisfaction of even the Times, that I stated the exact truth when I said that the Liberal-Conservatives have declared through the press that an election cannot be run without bribery and corruption. Mr. Emmerson has already declared in the most emphatic way that he will run his election without bribery and corruption. Mr. Wood has now ample time to do so. Will he give the electors of Westmorland a solemn assurance that he too will run his election without bribery and corruption? Mr. Emmerson is before the people for the first time, and is not accountable for the acts of others in 1878, 1882, or at any other time. He has not like Mr. Wood to cry out peccavi in that I spent money in 1882 as the Times confesses for me. Mr. Wood must not only confess, he must show that he is penitent, and give the honest electors of Westmorland evidence that his penitence is real, before he can stand in the position that his opponent does. The great question it seems to me in the contest in Westmorland, until Mr. Wood places himself on the same footing as Mr. Emmerson, is one of purity against corrupt practices in the election. Let Mr. Wood pledge himself that he will not use his own money, that he will not use the money of the Government, that he will not accept and use the money of monopolists in the present election, and then honestly carry out his pledge, and he will merit and have the confidence of all good and honest men, irrespective of creed or sect. Yours, &c., NO PARTIZAN.