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Evening Star, Issue 3309, 27 September 1873, Page 2

Rather a droll doctrine is laid down by the Daily Times this morning : not very clearly, but certainly unique in its way. Hear, oh ye slaudeieis and libellers ! When you pen or proclaim your stories from the house-top, only tell half the talc : leave room for the Daily Times to give its version : take care to select your language so as “ to leave a considerable margin for the inevitable amount of exaggeration that will be sure to accompany every successive repetition of them.” So decrees the Daily Times, most probably because it missed the chance of circulating a report respecting the Hospital which had long obtained such currency amongst the public, so that even without being circulated through the Press, it was clearly the duty of the Executive to inquire into it, especially as the Provincial Surgeon did not think necessary to contradict it. We wish we could imagine this muddy sentence to proceed from a repentant twinge on the part ot the Daily Times on seeing the damage it has caused to the Province and Colony through its reckless and ignorant denunciations of public men, postal services, and many useful works. Perhaps our charity might have extended so far as to think so, were it not that while publicly denouncing what it terms a “ gross libel” it forgets that on that very subject it allowed a scurrilous and wholly uncalled-for personal attack to appear \ and that in the very

paper in which this outward show of purity is printed, in an obscure corner is a virulent personal attack upon one of our City members, as puerile, contemptible, undeserved, and malicious as the persistent slanders admitted into “ Passing Notes ” usually are. In olden days there was a class of men who, with professions of purity on their lips, allowed themselves to do without scruple what they condemned in others. The name is changed in these days, but the class remains: they are not Scribes and Pharisees ; but the epithet by which their characters are summed up is equally applicable now as then. We do not know that any of those old world men were journalists : had they been, we can imagine such a sentence would have been recorded against them as might justly be written against the Daily Times , on whose shoulders their ill-woven mantle has fallen. “Woe unto you, Daily Times hypocrites ! for you condemn what you term libel and slander in others, while you yourselves, from your secret cloister, scatter both broadcast.” With regard to the Hospital, perhaps the Executive will now perceive that the inquiry that we urged would have been the shortest and most straightforward step that could have been adopted, in order to set public rumor at rest.