CORRESPONDENCE THE PUBLIC LIBRARY.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2640, 22 September 1882, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE

THE PUBLIC LIBRARY.

To the Editor of the Qloibe,

Sib, —Some few days ago, in your independent journal, I obeerred that a meeting is to be held on the 85th inet. of the Board of Governors of this much mismanaged institution. I certainly think that it is time their chairman and presiding genius should be called on to carry out the duties of the position more in accordance with the public wellbeing, and cause a proper supply of English daily papers to be laid on the tables of the public reading-room. The present maladministration is deserving of the severest censure, and undoubtedly an antithesis to Prince Leopold’s admirable speech at the Newspaper Press Fund dinner, whereby we are told that the direct social and political power of the Press is a fact which we are none of us unlikely to forget foi a day. And yet it is the indirect, the educative, power of the Press which is, 1 think, the greatest of all. The most pervading effect on mankind is produced, not by the arguments of the Press on points on which the various journals differ, hut by the instruction given and the tone assumed by the Press on which all journals concur. For after all, the main function of the Press is to be the contemporary and authentic record of the progrees of the world, and the world’s progress is not marked so much by the changing triumphs of one or the other party as by the steady increase of the mass of knowledge and experience on which all civilised men are agreed. And especially we may claim for onr English Press that it is surpassed by none in its earnest endeavors to understand the real conditions of foreign nations as well as our own. Are we to bo deprived of all the advantages so forcibly illustrated by his Boyal Highness, simply because it may be the dictum of the autocratic Chairman of this august body, or will the citizens of Christchurch quietly acquiesce in_ allowing their public reading-room to remain the laughing stock of all visitors P Yours, &0., CITIZEN. September 21st, 1882>