The Evening Star. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 1872.

Evening Star, Issue 2918, 26 June 1872, Page 2

The Evening Star. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 1872.

Our contemporary this morning takes occasion to repeat a charge against the Ministry in connection Avith this journal which is as ungenerous as it is untrue. It charges the Ministry Avith corruption equal to that which is alleged to have been practised in Victoria, because the Land Transfer Act advertisements connected Avith Dunedin and the surrounding districts are inserted in the Evening Star instead of in its columns: and further intimates that this journal seldom finds its Avay into the country districts, except as the cover “ of a sandwich.” After the compliment paid us of no doubt conducting this journal well, Ave feel bound to be equally polite in our form of expression, and merely say in reference to the charges, that the Daily Times is celebrated for made statements that thorough investigation has proved without foundation, and that the assertions in the article this morning are as baseless as those which have earned for it so unenviable a reputation. We should be glad to think that the deliberate misstatement of facts in this morning’s leader arose from ignorance of them, but, as that is impossible we leave the public to class it under its appropriate name as a breach of the moral code. The true state of the case is this : so far as the Land Transfer Act advertisements are concerned, they are a pure matter of contract, for which tenders Avere invited from both the Evening Star and the Daily Times, and they were given to the Evening Star in ordinary business spirit. The Editor of the Daily Times knows this perfectly, and knows also that the Land Transfer Department is not under Government control : that the Government has no immediate connection avith it, and that therefore the charge of corruption is utterly without foundation. The Evening Star receives the advertisements because of its large circulation rendering it a very superior advertising medium to the Daily Times. It is not true that it only circulates in Dunedin and suburbs. It has a considerable and constantly increasing circulation in the country ; but that does not matter to the Land Transfer Department, whose system of advertising is based upon a plan calculated to give the widest publicity to its notices. As the circulation of the Evening Star in Dunedin, East Taieri, and the neighbourhood exceeds the whole circulation of the Daily Times by very nearly half, as a consequence, so far as this district is concerned, its superior advertising advantages are manifest. Up the country there are many respectably conducted journals that circulate in their immediate districts by hundreds, where the Daily Times is seen by fives or tens. The Land Transfer Department, taking advantage of their large local circulation, advertise in them, irrespective of their political bias, as the surest means of securing publicity; and in districts where there aie no local jom’nals, where the Evening Star has no subscribers, and where it is just possible a copy of the Daily Times may find its way, it is employed as a sort of forlorn hope—a last chance that the information may reach the right quarter. Bearing in mind that the Daily Times did tender for these advertisements ; that its tender Avas not considered equally advantageous Avith that of the Evening Star ; that effort after effort has been made to induce the Government to interfere, but that the superior advantage of the present arrangement has been approved after searching scrutiny by the head of the department, it is plain that the idea of punishing the Daily Times for adverse criticisms is one of those hallucinations which occasionally deceive the editorial staff of our contemporary. In Melbourne the case was widely

different. The Duffy Ministry are said to have advertised in journals of the least circulation : in Dunedin the Land Transfer Department insert their notices in those which have the largest. We do not suppose it would make the slightest difference if the Government were unseated to-morrow, unless in fact the Ministry who may succeed them, actually do what the Daily Times wants the public to believe the present Ministry do, insert their notices in those journals alone that servilely support them. If the Evening Star has had Government advertisements which the Daily Times has not, it is because it is the most extensively read journal. If it supports Ministerial measures, it is because they appear to the Editor to be the best for the country, and when they seem otherwise they will be equally fearlessly condemned. The motto of the Slav is measures not men.