To the Editor of the Evening Mail.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 150, 25 June 1874, Page 2

To the Editor of the Evening Mail.

Sir — If you will kindly point out the writer of the leading article in your last night's paper, I will cause an inquiry to be made as to the state of hu mind, for I feel sure that no sound-minded man would wonder so far "the ordinary courtesy " due ''tothe public " as to write such an article without giving the public the benefit of the correspondence.

I have a shrub growing in the garden vulgarly called the cranky plant, simply because it puts forth its blossom before it has a leaf for its protection. Mark the analogy. When the Evening Mail or any other public journal comes out with a leader of condemnation such as yours of yesterday, founded as it was upon an unpublished letter, then. Sir, I can only look upon such leading articles as being ihe offspring of an unsound mind, a cranky child, and ought to be confined to a dark cell.

If I am not mistaken your correspondent ia no stranger to the Police Station, nor t<j the Superintendents Office, and had he called at either place he might have learnt that due notice had been given of the man* escape, and that within forty minutes the police were on the look-out for him. As to hia being a dangerous lunatic, he was up to the time of his escape harmless and civil, and was reported to the Superintendent as such.

I have, &c, Thomas Butler, Keeper Lunatic Asylum Nelson, June 24, 1874.

[If Mr Butler would take better care of the patients placed under his charge, and leave letter writbg to those who understand it, he might be a more useful officer. In hia foolish anger he has entirely missed tho point of the article with which he findß fault. The complaint was that the fact of the escape from custody of a lunatic apt to be violent was not made public, and that he was allowed to roam about for several days when he might havo been captured had it been known that he was abroad. Ed. N.E.M] •