OUR WELLINGTON LETTER

Evening Star, Issue 3577, 10 August 1874, Page 2

OUR WELLINGTON LETTER

August 1. For the second time I am forced to commence a letter with a peiaonal matter—directly personal, but indirectly not without some interest to the public. The ordinary newspaper correspondent in Wellington has not an enviable task. He must obtain his information unassisted ; if he is careful, he has to go to considerable trouble to satisfy himself that that information is trustworthy j he has to put up with official insolence in some quarters, and to compete against unseen influences. I had not intended to have again complained on this head, if the evil had not shown itself in a - more extended and dangerous form ; hue it is now necessary to refer to it, if only in self-justification. Official snobbishness can be checked, if not effectually crushed ; but underhand work can only be exposed. In the latter case the risk is great, because you incur displeasure in unexpected quarters, and because your charges must be made in general terms, But at the risk of giving offence, where I am convinced none should be taken—l don’t for a moment think the persons intended to be reached could be offended—l must protest as strongly as I can against the illegal manner in which information is obtained through certain cha mels. I can instance three cases within the last week in which information has been obtained, in what I do not hesitate to call an improper and disreputable manner. 1 am not about to say that any officials are tampered with, but I will affirm what I am about to complain of, is, and can only be done with their cognisance, if not by their actual assistance, if it will be attempted to be said that the information about the latest despatches on immigration, the despatches themselves, the mining report, or the proceedings before the committee which is investigating the Ward-Chapman scandal came through an ordinary channel, I am prepared to meet assertion with a flat contradiction, and to prove, if necessary, its absolute falsity. In tWo of the cases I have referred to, certain persons were enabled, days before the papers were circulated, to inform the r constituents in the North and in the ftouthof the entire matters dealt with in those papers; and 1 am not travelling beyond the limit of the fact when 1 say that in one instance persons in the South were able to discuss important info mation before even those on the spot, for whom that information was obtained. It requires very extraordinary means to compete with such underhand oigamsations as these ; and the Star has never yet stooped to such ciurses, though it will be obliged to do so, if in future sessions it desires to compete with its local contemporaries, unless such practices are stopped.

August 3. When I wrote on Saturday I had not the remotest idea that the subject I dealt with by way of introduction would so soon be brought under the notice nf the public and of Parliament as it has been. Before this will have reached you the House of JRepreseutatives will have been called upon to consider as a breach of privilege the improper publicity given to the proceedings of one of its committees. When I wrote on Saturday I had before me the knowledge of the fact that the evidence given by Judge Ward before the Ward-Chapman Committee was in the possession of some individuals, and was bein'' used by them in diffsrent parts of the Colony for their own purposes. But it now appears taat the proceedings of the Committee are as well known as if they were conduct-d with open doors, while, of course, the assumption is that they are secret. It transpires that “the private correspondent” of one of the Auckland journals is enabled to wire from here a message which purports to give not only Judge Ward’s evidence in chief before the Committee, but his answers to the questions there put to him, and the demeanor of some members of the committee; that information, after publication in Auck-’ land, is re-wired to Wellington through the medium of the Press Association, and furmshed by it to the local papers. The ‘l imes’ this morning declines to publish it, because supplied in a manner “altogether unusual and irregular, if not also a breach of privilege”; but one of the evening papers did not follow this example. The ‘ Post ’ acted as the ‘Times’did in the morning not being disposed to afford those members, ‘ ‘ who are always burning with anxiety to hang, draw, and quarter ” newspaper correspondents, a splendid opportunity of making a legitimate example. Speaking of the case under notice, the ‘ Post ’ says We doubt whether there is a precedent for such a daring violation of the rights, privileges, and immunities of Parliament. Surreptitiously to report the proceedings of a committee, one of whose special duties it is to find out how certain Government secrets found their way into the Press, is really to beard the lion in its den! We wonder whether the Parliamentary lion will quietly submit to the indignity, or turn and rend its insultor. We should really like a good breach of privilege case. It would be intensely amusing to see how the House would comport itself under the circumstances, and we should certainly pity the victim consigned to the tender mercies ot such a stern and callous gaoler as Dr Greenwood would make. If the committee does not insist on probing this latest scandal to the bottom, all public confidence ip. it must be lost, for how can people believe in its ability to discover the manner in which Government secrets leaked out when it cannot even keep its own '!

The ‘Tribune’ published the telegrams contending that there could be no breach of privilege or of anything proper when the secret was made public, and discussed the matter thus :

mpnihpr nf breach of confidence of some member of the committee, and that is the committee s business, 'ihere is a growing lack of discreet reticence and honorable feeling amouc numbers of public men in respect of informal tion they receive officially. A perpetual blabmg goes on, so that one never knows when ne is safe, and we can hardly wonder at telegraph clerks being seduced from their allegiance When tell-tales, such as the one now before us,

occur so frequently among those who ought to know better. There is another point which Suggests itself, but we hardly care to reter to it. Certainly newspapers occasionally appear to receive official information earlier thun their contemporaries, but we have always contaafc l $ v y a * mor « owing to the pestering persistency of the news collectors than to any wish on the part of officials to deal unfairly. J I quote the last part of the * Tribune’s * article, because it is evident frem it that I am not the only one who has cause to complain ; though I disagree with the writer’s conclusion.