The Evening Star. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1871.

Auckland Star, Volume II, Issue 347, 18 February 1871, Page 2

The Evening Star.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1871.

Our evening contemporary continues to play on the same string still, and ifc is surprising to. observe what music he can elicit from the name of Vogel. We had hoped that the removal of the Colonial Treasurer from Auckland would have delivered our contemporary from Vogel-on-the-brain, but the reception of the least intelligence as to his whereabouts, has had the effects of exciting the old frenzy, and producing a relapse, intensified apparently by the strength acquired during a cessation of the malady.

"We were aware that our contemporary was speaking untruth when he announced that Mr. Webb had repudiated the contract, and we stated so. But so positive had been the assertion, that we waited, hoping to find the grounds on which our contemporary based his unscrupulous assertion. These are at length revealed ; and it now appears that the information conveyed with so little hesitation, was but an inference from an intimation which we had already published, but which had appeared to him in the usual sombre hue of the " dismal" clouds that darken his mental vision. " Assuming," says the Evening News, " Messrs. Webb and Holloday, then, to haye bought out Mr. Hall—of which, however, there is no proof—and to have resolved on a line in which Tahiti, Eiji, New Caledonia, and Sydney, are to be included, what is this but a repudiation of the Neilson-cum-Vogel contract ?" And this is it after all! This is the ground for all that homily on the duties of the Pi'ess ; the crime of concealment ! The subject is evidently a new one to our contemporary ; and in his researches he has discovered a nest—a mare's one. " Let the truth be told, whoever it shames," says the Evening News in the beautiful grammatical diction for which that paper ia distinguished. And this is tho " truth " at which he has so exulted as the crushing of Auckland's hopes ; this the " truth " which he boasts that; he has " telegraphed to the South ;" and the result of which he pants with excitement to learn. This is that which will give to Australia the laugh against Auckland; which "will be spread over the whole of the Australian Colonies within a few hours of the arrival of the City of Melbourne in Port Jackson ;" and which will produce for him whips of scorpions with which to lash his fellow townsmen. "In a few days," he says, holding up the rod, "we shall hear what is ""said of this in the South, and we shall not be long ' before we get important -'n reference to it from 17 fhis ground of " —Mch we

Webb was intending even a more comprehensive scheme than that ex-: pected. And if our contemporary's geography was not as bad as his grammar, he would have seen that it is not one, but a series of steam lines that is contemplated. Not having perhaps a map of the Pacific he is not aware that no mail line between San Francisco and Sydney could embrace Honolulu, Tahiti, Fiji, Auckland, and Noumea, and mistaking the extended schemes of the new mail company for an abandonment of the New Zealand scheme, or presuming on the ignorance of the people of Auckland, and wilfully intending to mislead, our contemporary has had the audacity to litter a deliberate falsehood. It is not the first time that this has been the course taken by our contemporary : and as we have said, from the contemptuous silence towards him of the morning papers, and our own leniency, he has done so with comparative impunity. But we do iv the name of outraged public feeling protest against these "dismal" inferences being palmed off on the public as authentic intelligence; and most of all we deprecate that any one should take credit for his own distempered fancies ; and from having obtruded on the public the phantoms conjured up from the dismal caverns of a doleful imagination, should claim to be the champion of truth. Our contemporary boasts in his issue of yesterday to have been the collaborateur of Charles Dickens, and Gibbon Wakefield, and Charles Mackay, and many others; and we can only say poor Dickens! Unhappy all the rest of them ! But then we must remember what a long residence in Tasmania may have produced, and the melancholy effects of long and doleful years of" vexing his righteous soul from day to-day " with the scenes there presented. It may indeed, as our contemporary says, be " rather late in the day for any one to think of reading him lectures on the functions of the press;" and we can only say more is the pity. And we do not lecture him with any hope of reformation, but impelled by a sense of duty. And while we fully agree with him that "publicity is the life of newspapers," we would remind him that there is something greater, better far, that is truth. And even though it is " rather late in the day," we would counsel him that no vindictive spirit should over prompt him to publish deliberate falsehood.