VILIFYING A COUNTY COUNCIL.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 74, 3 April 1877, Page 3

VILIFYING A COUNTY COUNCIL.

(from the timaku herald.)

The Oamaru Evening Mail publishes a paragraph which we subjoin in full:— The following extraordinary scene took place in a County Council not a thousand miles from Geraldine (says the Standard): One of the Councillors, addressing a brother Councillor, said, " You contemptible would-be informer, you thought to lead the sergeant on to me and to my house." The Councillor to whom this was addressed replied, "Itis an infernal lie. I never did anything of the sort. I don't go near your house, and don't want to know whether you sell liquor on Sunday or not." The first-named Councillor, who, it may be stated, is a publican, then rushed over to his brother Councillor, and striking an attitude that is sometimes described as " shaping," he shouted at the top of his voice, "It is not a lie. You did do it. You gave the sergeant the names of the persons who went in and came out of my house on Sunday, and I have a — mind to —." At this point the other Councillors and some ratepayers interfered, and the '' scene " ended.

Our Oamaru contemporary speaks of the Standard as if there was only one Standard in the world, and as if, therefore, there could be no mistake as to what paper was alluded to. We need hardly say that there are a great many journals called the Standard, several of which are published i» New Zealand. The paragraph before

us, however, proclaims its own origin only too plainly. As it is a string of malicious lies from one end to the other, we know at once that it proceeds from the Rangiora Standard, a paper published apparently for the sole purpose of disseminating falsehood and slanders. The editor oi' that paper must be what the Sun Francisco Bulletin calls (with a nasal intonation) " an .accomplished perverter of the truth;" for his duty—which he performs admirably—appears to be to invent the most most monstrous romances that the human mind can conceive. No decent paper takes any notice of the crazy libels which fill the columns of the Rangiora Standard ; and we should not on this occasion have departed from that salutary rule, had not our respectable contemporary, the Oamaru Evening Mail republished the paragraph in question. We have already stated that it is a string of lies ; and in support of that statement we may mention that no meeting of the County Council ever took place in Geraldine ; that the members of the Geraldine County Council do not comprise a.publican ; and that no altercation of any kind whatever took place at cither of the two meetings which the Geraldine Council have held. We doubt not that the veracious author of the paragraph in question will plead that he has not accused any County Council in particular, because he referred to a " County Council not a thousand miles from Gereldine;" but that, of course, is a subterfuge which everybody sees through. We know the truth of the old adage, " You cannot touch filth without being defiled ;" and we, therefore, enter most unwillingly on any criticism of the Rangiora Standard. As, however, the lies of that paper.had been reproduced as " news," (we are sure unwittingly) in a good little paper, we thought it our duty, for once, to wallow in the mire.