CORRESPONDENCE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume V, Issue 76, 31 March 1870, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

*** We are desirous of affordins every reasonable facility for the discussion of x>ublic subjects; but it must be understood that we are in no way responsible for tbe opinions expressed by correspondents. HON. W. FOX'S LECTURE. To the Editor of the Nelson Evening Mail. Sir — I was somewhat surprised, and considerably pained while reading your notice of Mr. Fox's lecture on total- abstinence. While doing ample justice to the honorable gentleman as one ofthe finest orators in New Zealand, and bestowing upon him the credit of being "an excellent actor," possessing the bappy knack of so far acquitting himself " in carrying out the ta*k he has undertaken," that you fear no contradiction in paying him the sorry compliment by saying, " that an hour could not be more pleasantly spent than in attendingone of thoselecturesfor which the Premier has rendered himself celebrated throughout the colony," still you are inclined to take a higher view of human nature than Mr. Fox. Yet what a strange logical deduction you make from the fact "that having formed certain fixed opinions he is convinced that they must be, and are, perfectly right!" You say that "having entirely lost his own individuality," for the time being he becomes a sort of fabled centaur dependent " not so much upon his own wili" as upon that of the hobby-horse of which he forms part and -parcel. Now, Mr. Editor, you may not perhaps agree with me — but I certainly should not consider an hour well, nor pleasantly spent in listening to a mere orator, who, " having formed certain fixed opinions, and, convinced that they must be, and

are perfectly right," did not, like all enthusiasts, fully identify himself with his subject. I honestly confess to the wearisomeness I have often felt in listening to speakers who apparently did not forget self while dwelling upon the most important of all topics, and their discourses have in consequence been sadly wanting in that " earnestness and zeal " so strikingly manifested bj the lecturer last Saturday evening. Surely your full recognition of the " vast importance of the subject to which Mr. Fox lias of late been devoting liis attention" would have led you to reconsider the substance of your late leading article ere it was put in type, and then your readers would have been spared the following contradiction to your former reasoning about the lecturer's " certain fixed opinion", &c, &c." "No argument," you say, "that ever we have heard adduced on this subject has proved to our satisfaction that the moderate drinker would, in abstaining from that which is, to a certain extent, a source of enjoyment, and, in many cases, a necessity to him, be performing an action which would be either praiseworthy in the eyes of his fellow- men, or acceptable to his Maker." If you would kindly allow me space in your columns for another letter, I think it would not be difficult to sho-v that in this, and several other, points upon which you touch in your late article, there is plain evidence that for the nonce you have not as a ''plain practical tnan dealt with facts and not with dreams." Yours. &c., Thomas GilbertSuburban North, March 29, 1870. [We gladly give insertion to Mr. Gilbert's letter, but shall reserve any reply to it until we are in receipt of his next communication. —Ed. N. E. M.