man wrote: He is a secret enemy, not an open fee, and in future it is the duty of all right-thinking men to treat his wordy vapourizings with the select contempt they deserve... The maligned politician sprang to defend himself on 13 April 1886, page 6f: Any man speaking of me as attempting to "gull" anybody can only be measuring me by some standard of his own to which course I respectfully demur to have judgments passed upon me... Another correspondent to the Register on 16 September 1886 complained: If [he] wishes his 300 to 400 pioneers on labourers' blocks to succeed he had with misleading statements, but rather ought to preach to them uninterrupted industry (no eight-hours system), the strictest of economy and an unlimited amount of self-denial. A further unsolicited opinion is given in the Register on 27 October 1886: [He is] a South Australians in finance, and yet every effort he makes seems to increase the fog through which we have to discover his meaning... A Rev Honner criticised Cotton's scheme in the Register, 15 February 1888, saying: If I may judge of those blocks by some I have seen, then they must be intended for blockheads, for no sane man would live on them, unless he was seeking a wilderness for the occupation of meditation. But Cotton retorted on 17 February 1888: I hope when the historian has to look back at the difficulties small holdings had to encounter... that there will not be "perils among false brethren" to be received as amongst the bitterest opposition. Another citizen entered the fray on 22 February 1888: For some years past Mr Cotton has been energetically blowing his own trumpet from the homestead blocks. Some of us working men are growing tired of [it]: Cotton's the man for all jobs, He scowls on all the nobs, He winks and shouts at the snobs, And he sighs for the Government's bobs. Yet another citizen offered an unflattering opinion of Cotton in the Register, 4 August 1890: ...They distrust him; they do not know in what category of politicians to place him; he really stands alone. Sometimes he seems radical and appears is the advocate of thorough reform; at others he opposes the very things which would more than any other benefit the workers... In the heat of a public debate on the "land question" a correspondent to the Register