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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 290, 3 December 1873, Page 2

! Mr O'Cokor 4 and the Phess. — The Grey River Argus of the 26th Nov. writes as followa:~If there was the slightest necessity for illustrating' that thia journal in strongly questioning and condemning the pretentious of the candidate for the Nelson Superintandency, is taking no exceptional course, but a course which I accords with widely distributed contemj porary opinion, that could easily be illustrated by quotations from journals in I different parts of the Colony—journals I variously owned, diverse in political opinion, and respectable as representatives of the Fourth Estate. Equally would these quotations go to show the falsity of the ridiculous charges of venality, virulence, personal emnity, and bo forth, which are imade against the Press as a whole, as if the Pressof the Province or of the Colony had suddenly, by some diabolical agency, been converted into a machine to break a blow-fly. There is no necessity for taaking such quotations more than we have done, nor would there be propriety in doing so in any one interest of the readers of these columns. But the fact of the existence of such an abundance of coincident testimony may be fairly referred to. It may be fairly referred to that where the candidate is well and personally known not alone in Westport. but elsewhere — the papers are eignificantly silent, or impelled by tauufc to come out with honesfc conviction, Bnd that where he is but politically known, the presumption of his candidature is equally questioned. Going furthest away to begin with, we can refer to Dunedin and Wellington as places where their political acquaintance has—contrary to party sympathy — compelled writers to say that the alternative under the circumstances must be the re-election of Mr Curtis. In Nelson also we have seen that on the part of the Press there is unaminity — unamimty against the grain, and with a painful attempt, on the part of the Colonist) which becomes- not its past history, to . maintaia a reputation for neutrality, or the position of "sitting on a rail," as if neutrality, so Tar as the open column is concerned, were not the characteristic of every paper. And at Westport, where the difficulties of the situation will be appreciated by anyone who knows £he,de;l|eacy; requisite in conducting a Journal ia a locality where it way nWesia.rilj >-W ibifbiiif one pakished, e?sn esco^bW neutrality i&dlo giva way.

and, instigated to take a stand % taunts and misrepresentations which are 'the candidate's fault and forte, the local paper has spoken out. Spoken out in language which, for spirit, plainness, and dignity, is a credit to its conductor, and comparable with anything that has been written on the subject of this election.