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Auckland Star, Volume IV, Issue 1201, 9 December 1873, Page 2

(To the Editor of the Evening Star.) Sir, —Having seen in your paper of this evening another letter from John Britton, the sailor, making foul and revolting charges against thirteen or fourteen married people, I believe there is not another sailor on the Chile, or any ship nqpr afloat, but himself would undertake to rob in the most sanctified manner the parent and child of their character. I, as a husband and a father in a strange land, ask the authorities to take this matter lip on our behalf. It is true in his letter of the sth he never mentioned tho single people (male or female), but by his silenco all were included. But since my letter of the Gth that fact has been pointed out to him, and at this critical time it will not do to arouse the angor of the single girls and men. He, with assisted cunning, gets asw reet to put in their mouths, which ho puts in print on Monday, the Bth, in these words, " I rejoice to say was most exemplary." This is really drawing-room language ; but why was it not in Friday's issuo. He asks did I ever attend his religious meotings. I think ho spoke twice on religion ; I certainly was not there. But on Monday night I listened with some of the passengers to a recitation from Shakespeare delivered by John Britton. It was most revolting and obscene, and not at all fit for young persons to hear. Granting all that this man has said is truth, will not the public demand a reason why tho agents and commissioners of immigration in England, Ireland, and Scotland are sending out the most " degraded" and " lowest of the low, " lost to all sense of decency ?' Britton, the sailor, says so. To send such people to Auckland, or any part of New Zealand is not acting right to the inhabitants, who have to pay the vast sums it costs the Government to send out these immigrants. •And how do these immigrants get here ? Have they by forgery filled in the printed forms ? and is this winked at by the agents at home for fear of closing their offices and losing their salaries ? If what the sailor says is true, the agents could never have enquired about them all, but were only too glad to get them ; and if so, let there be a searching enquiry by the Commissioners of Emigration, and not deceive the inhabitants of New Zealand any longer by sending out people "lost to all sense of decency." Or did the agents see that all was right, and that each one was worthy to be assisted out to this country, the printed forms filled in properly, their characters all genuine. What was the evil influence and power exercised over sixteen married people with thirty-one children, numbers at tho breast ? From the time they left England to their arrival in Auckland the evil must have been working, until the parents, one and all (according to Britton) became the "lowest of the low." Surely the public will ask the authorities to find out the cause of fathers and mothers, " once respectable and good, becoming lost to all sense of decency " during the voyage to this land. [Our correspondent here enumerates the names of a number of married people whose characters he defies any one to call in question.] He concludes : "Excuse me, Mr Editor, for so long a letter—l am weeping. It has struck one o'clock, and my little ones are sleeping. I ask the authorities in the name of our children, for their sakes and ours, to take up the cause against the sailor Britton.—l have, &c, Charles Crawford, Immigrants' Barracks." [This must close the correspondence for the present.—Ed. E.S.]