The Kumara Times. Published Every Evening. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 1878.

Kumara Times, Issue 533, 12 June 1878, Page 2

The Kumara Times. Published Every Evening. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 1878.

The West Coast Limes, which considers itself the representative newspaper of the County of Westland, has, of late, not been distinguished for any of those qualities which are usually considered to be the first essentials of a public journal. How this deplorable condition has been arrived at, it is difficult to explain ! but it is a fact that it has ceased to sustain the character it once bore of an impartial ami public-spirited journal. Just as the wind blows the straw, so does the West Coast Times follow, but it has not the courage ot the Vicar of Bray, who did not—so the song says—conceal the elasticity of his opinions. On the contrary, it at one times assumes a lofty, patronising air ; and at another h quite ready, at command, to either eat the leek or become a thorough tufthuntw. It is not many months since that this model journal characterised Sir George Grey as an imbecile—as a man whose tn st fitting place was a lunatic asylum rather than the position of a political leader. Not only was the present Premier personally held up to ridicule, but his noli--y was stigmatised as visionary, mere claptrap, and so forth; but the moment the popular current assumed force, (he West Coast Times, with its usual syco-

phancy, turned its coat inside out, and now kisses the hands of those whom it opposed with virulence a short time before. And never have the characteristics of this journal been more prominently displayed than with regard to the pending election for this electoral district. It was no secret that one of its proprietors had a hankering ambition to obtain a seat in Parliament , in fact, he was at one time a defeated candidate for this constituency, but now the chances of his election being no greater than they were before, the “spretae injuria formes”—otherwise the malice of a woman whose wooing had, been met by rejection, steps in, and in true feminine vindictiveness does it find vent in the columns of the West Coast Times of yesterday. For the present it is not our intention to criticise the claims or merits of any of the candidates who have as yet offered themselves j our object now is to denounce, as strongly as decent language will allow, the cowardly, cruel, and altogether disgraceful attack made in the columns of the Time* upon Mr Fitzgerald who, to the horror of the “Ring” which rule that journal, has ventured to present himself as a candidate. We are as well aware of Mr Fitzgerald’s single infirmity as the West Coast Times is, and with all his true friends deplore it; but allowing this fault, which is one to be surmounted and which has been surmounted before, he has more solid sense in his head, a larger knowledge ■of public affairs, and possesses altogether more capacity as a public man than could be found if all the heads of all the proprietors and “clientelle” of the West Coast Times were boiled down to their very essence. And yet the Times after* “ kicking the man that is down” and doing all that it can to kill him, Pharasaically exclaims: “It is not our desire to throw water on a drowned rat or jump on a nun when he is down,’’ What a shame this is ! “ Public duty” is the excuse, but whoever knew public duty to be the mainspring of the action of the West Coast Times of'late years ? There was a time when its columns were illuminated by the contributions of the very man it now seeks to smother, but we mistake the hearts of the people of this electorate if the rabid outburst of simulated “ public duty,” which appeared in the Times of yesterday, will not entirely defeat its object.