The Feilding Star. THURSDAY, MARCH 23, 1893. " Our London Critic."

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 117, 23 March 1893, Page 2

The Feilding Star. THURSDAY, MARCH 23, 1893. " Our London Critic."

Most of our readers will remember that day after day and month after month in 1891 extracts from the Financial Times were wired from London, to this colony, containing comments which were the reverse of complimentary to the New Zealanders. They will also remember that the press of the colony, and members of both Houses of Parliament resented these attacks made by a journal which at that time was really unknown in the recognised financial circle in London, according to an official communication from the then resident AgentGeneral for the colony, Sir C. Dillon Bell. In the issue of that journal of February Snd of this year the editor says : " One of the notable characteristics of our colonial friends is that they are extremely thin-skinned." Well, if that means a readiness to resent an affront, to meet a lie by direct contradiction and disproof, and to regard their commercial honor as one of their most valued possessions, we agree with our London " friend " that colonials are thin-skinned, and it is devoutly to be hoped they will never be anything else. Within the last few months the Financial News has made the discovery that New Zealand is a prosperous country, and now, with characteristic impudence, takes credit for the change, ignoring the fact that it is not New Zealand but the Financial News which has changed. If the authors of the slanders on New Zealand, which were published in the columns of that paper, had even attempted to investigate the affairs of the colony as disclosed in Parliamentary papers and in the Banking Returns, they would have seen that New Zealand had, even in her darkest days during the Maori disturbances, a fair claim to the title of prosperous. But the Financial News did not want to do this. The object of the proprietors of the paper was to blacken the financial reputation of the colony, no doubt for reasons best known to themselves, and we believe firmly that it is disappointed it did not succeed in its wicked object. An evidence of the peculiar bent of mind which actuates the editor is found in the sentence " With all respect to our colonial contemporaries, we care equally for tlieir abuse and their eulogy." When a man has become callous to either praise or blame his mental condition is such as ought to, and will, excite the commiseration of honest right thinking men. The criticism of the Financial News was never honest, or well intended, and it was well described at the time by New Zealand independent papers as " virulent " and evilly disposed. Its praise is as little to be valued now as its condemnation was to be feared in 1891.