The Duel between the Surveyor-General and a Member of Council. (From the "Sydney Morning Herald," Oct. 1.)

New Zealander, Volume 7, Issue 584, 19 November 1851, Page 3

The Duel between the Surveyor-General and a Member of Council. (From the " Sydney Morning Herald," Oct. 1.)

It will not he disputed that Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, as Surveyor-General of the Colony, and Mr. Stuart Alexander Donaldson, as a member of the Colonial legislature, are public men. It cannot be denied tbat the observations made by the latter, in his speech at the nomination for Durham, respecting the expenditure of tbe Survey Department, and the letter published by the former in reply to tbose observations, are public acts. It follows, that both the speech and the speaker, the letter and its writer are before the public, and fairly open to public criticism. And if it should be doubted whether the ulterior proceedings which have resulted from these transactions are also amenable to public opinion, tbe doubt might be silenced by the fact that, through the medium of their authorised friends, the parties have themselves appealed to the public. We, therefore, feel quite justified, as public journalists, in reviewing the whole case, and expressing our deliberate judgment as to its merits. We trust we shall do so impartially, for we have no personal bias with regard to either of the gentlemen. And we shall endeavour to discharge our duty with all the courtesy that is due to the respectability of their station in society, so far as i courtesy may be compatible with what, we believe to be i justice. Let us first review the facts. In our annual examination of tho Abstract of the Colonial Revenue and Expenditure, we have for several I years past called the special attention, of our readers to the large sums of money expended on the survey, sale, and mangement of Crown Lands, and to the fact that over this expenditure our representatives in the Legislature have no control. The disbursements last year under this head amounted to £46,293 12s. 7d. ; whilst the aggregate appro pi iationa of what ia called the " Crown Revenue" amounted, within the same period, to £23'J,877 13s. 6d. And all this at the " pleasure" of the Executive, unchocked, unquestioned by the Legislative Couucil. Now whether this be in reality a political grievance or not, the colonists have an unquestionable right to think it so, and to call it so. They have the right to complain of it on all fitting occasions, and in the severest terms allowable to free discussion. No occasion could be more fitting than a General Election, when candidates are entitled, and expected, and required to state frankly and fully the grounds upon which they solicit the suffrages of the electors, and the views they entertain with regard to the leading questiona of public policy. It was on such an occasiou that Mr. Donaldson delivered the speech above referred to. He was a candidate for the honour which has since been conferred upon him — that of representing the County of Durham in the Legislative Council. On the day olt nomination I he appeared before the constituency, and being request- j ed by the Returning Officer to address the meeting, be did so, and in the course of his address made the observations from which the case under review dates its commencement. Being perfectly in Older so far as time and place were concerned, was be in any other respect out of oider? Did he exceed the recognized bounds of | free speech 1 JDid he willfully misrepresent facts 1 Did he betray a'malevolent or vindictive spirit ? Did j he utter ungentlemanly language 1 His exact words, as reported in our journal of the 22nd ultimo, were as follows : — •• A great reform was wanted in some of the Government Departments. Theie was the Surveyor-General's Department for one. This was intimately connected ( with the question of the control of the Crown Land i Revenue. At present the Executive Council, by Act ] of Parliament, was the only body having control over that department, which was paid fiom the Crown Land Revenue. They would scarcely behove it, but it was | a fact, that in this w<iy a sum of £40,000 yearly was j expended without the contiol of tho representatives of | the people. And what did they get for all this money 1 | Such a miserable amount was done for it, that it leminded him only of Fatetafl"'s exclamation at the quanUiy of bieud that went to one penny worth of sack."

These were the observations at which the Surveyor* General took umbrage. The spppcb, as before mentioned, appeared in the Heiald of Monday, the 22nd ultimo. On the following Friday, the 26th, appeared Sir Thomas Mitchells first lettor, which consisted of two paragraphs, one being restricted to matters of ftct, the other indulging in matters of infeicnce. In his statistical paragraph, Sir Thomas sets out with a misquotation. "Refeiring," he says, "to what is reported in your columns to have been said tit the nomination for the county of Durham, viz., 'That the Sur-veyor-General's Depaitmeitt cosh j£40,000 per annum' I tiustyou will allow me, through the same medium, to contradict that statement." No such statement was made. Sir Thomas must have quoted from memory, and his memory must have deceived him. The words which we have printed in Italics are in his letter enclosed by quotation marks ; whence the reader would infer that they have been transcribed, verbatim el liteiatim, from Mr. Donaldson's speech. But the words actually used in the speech, or in the report it from which Sir Thomas professed to quote, were these : — " In this way a sum of .£40,000 yearly was expended without the control of I the representatives of the people." The antecedent undoubtedly bears out the construction, that by tho words '• in this way ? " was meant that the Executive Council, as the only body having control over the Crown Lands Revenue, paid that sum to the Survey Department ; but construction is one thing, literal accuracy of quotation another. However, in the fiist paragraph there is nothing further to be objected to. Mr. Donaldson evidently referred to the aggregate expenditure under the head " Survey, Sale, and Management of Crown Lands," which, as we have already said, waa last year £46,293. Sir Thomas Mitchell veiy properly points out that of this sum only belonged strictly to his department. But, having disposed of the facts, the Surveyor "General proceeds to comments : and here he " leaves the public to stamp its own reprobation upon a monstrous charge so falsely or so carelessly made, to the prejudice of one whose colonial services have won for him a fame which it is hoped may not be blighted by the stereotyped j oke about " bread and sack." The offended here becomes in turn an offender ; and the npxt link in the case is a letter from Mr. Dobie and Mr. Burrowes, published in our number of the 27 th. We are here informed that some communications had taken place between these gentlemen iw the friends, re- , spectively, of Mr. Donaldson and Sir Thomas L.' Mitchell, with reference to Sir Thomas's letter of the previous day. These communications would appear to have resulted in an interchange of letters in every way creditable to the honour and Christian feeling of the writers. Sir Thomas says to Mr. Donaldson, " I withdraw the words, • charges so falsely,' in my letter to the Sydney Morning Heutld of this date. I regret having used them, feeling asauied that you did not mean to say that ray department cost £ 10,000 per annum." And Mr. Donaldson says to Sir Thomas — " I now beg to cay that the remarks made by me on the hustings at the nomination for the County of Durham, with reference to the control and administration of the Crown Lands, applied to the expenditure in the management of such lands in general, of which the SurveyorGeneral's department forms only a portion, and not the Surveyor- General's department alone, such expenditure amounting to upwards of £40,000 per annum, being withdrawn by Acts of the Imperial Parliament from the control of the Local Legislature." Here the matter ought to have rested. Both parties had made the amende honorable, and ought to have stood as well with eacli other as they undoubtedly did with, the public. But on Monday, the 29th, there appeared a letter from Sir Thomas to Mr. Donaldson, dated the day after the conciliatory interchange just quoted. In the absence of explanation, this letter is not quite intelligible, except as to its closing announcement, which is intelligible enough. " I hasten to say that lam now on my way to see a friend who will, I trust, endeavour to place this matter on a more satisfactory footing than it has* yet arrived at. The " satisfactory footing" is, we presume, to L t found in the denouement thus described in our report of yesterday :— " Both parties met at half-past four on Saturday afternoon, at a secluded spot near the Water Reserve-rSir Thomas attended by Lieutenant Burrowes, and Mr. Donaldson by Mr. Dobie. They each exchanged three shots ; and in the last fire a ball passed through Mr. Donaldson's hat, and another was within an inch of Sir Thomas's throat. The seconds then interfered, and the combatants left the ground." So far as the facts are before us, this is the case, and a pitiable case it is. Both parties are deeply to blame, but the heaviest censure undoubtedly attaches to the Surveyor-General. As a paid Government officer he had no right whatever to take public notice of Mr. Donaldson's speech, "privileged " os it constitutionally was, further than might be necessary for setting facts right. His comments were not only unwarrantable, but highly offensive ; and he did honour alike to his head and to his heart by retracting them as he did. But why he sbonld so soon, and so impetuously, have retracted his retractation, and called Mr. Donaldson out there is nothing before us to show, beyond that fiery temper which appears to have set the good offices of his chosen friend and adviser at haughty defiance. We blame Mr. Donaldson for fighting ; and we protest we see nothing else in any part of his conduct deserving the Serious displeasure of any man. Of all modes of settling disputes, duelling is tho most absurd, tho most contemptible, and, assassination alone excepted, the mo&t criminal before God and man. So the nobility and gentry of England are beginning to allow, not only in theorj but in practice ; and we are satisfied the day is not distant, when amongst educated men. generally the sender of a challenge will be denounced as virtually guilty of the complex crime of murder and suicide, and the refuser be respected and admired as the true man of honour — the Christian and the gentleman — who reverences the Authority that lias said, " Thou sualt do no Mvbbeh."

Gold and Commercb on the Pacific. —ln connexion with the facts in regard to the recent discovery of gold mines in Australia, we may mention the fact, which seems to have been forgotten, that in the year 1834, Captain Macy, of Wiscasset, Maine, cruising in a whale ship, off the North Coast of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, obtained gold from the natives in exchange for hoop-iron, whales'teeth, and scraps, &c, from which he realised 38,000 dollars on his return home. This gold was put up in bottles, and was of the very finest quality, not unlike that obtained in the trade on the coast of Mozambique, put up in ostrich quills. The natives inhabiting the Coast of NewGuinea, and those Islands were savage and hostile cannibals, and there appears to bave been but little intercourse with th*n either before or since the above mentioned voyage of Captain Mftoy; and his discovery, which was not mentioned in the public journals of the times, will corroborate the opinion suggested by the late intelligence from Australia, that far more extensive and important discoveries of gold are yet to be made in those sporadic groups of the Pacific ocean. Tho development of these newly discovered resources is destined to exercise upon tho commerce, wealth, and political and social condition of the Pacific, the moat important and permanent influences. This second great impulse will facilitate and hasten the completion of the lint which will form a chain of steam communication around the globe, by the establishment of a line of steamers from this point to China and these Islands. The vast numbers who will be impelled hither from tho old world, will not only precipitate the conquest, occupation, and settlement, of these continents in the ocean, but will, undoubtedly, at no distant day, disturb and dissolve the colonial relations of the European possessions in the Pacific. —California Morning Past.

Wateulow's Autogiuphic Pnrss. —Amongst the most practically useful inventions which have recently come under our notice, whether we regard it in reference to the commercial world, or as an instrument in the hands of a private gentleman, " The Autographic Press," patented by Waterlow and Son, is entitled to foremost mention. By this apparatus, any person may with facility print any number of letters, circulars, pea and ink sketches, musical notations, or other matters in which duplicate copies are wanted; the whole machinery being compassed in a neat box not larger than a lady's writing-case. The mode in which tbe transfer 19 eflected may be briefly described. For instance : a letter is written on prepared paper, and then transferred to a polished metallic plate by means of hand-power, assisted by a " scraper." The paper ia then washed off the plate with water, when tbe writing remains on the plate, and is charged with ink from a roller somewhat similar to tho ordinary printing roller. Paper is now laid on tbe plate, and upon the application of pressure, in tbe manner before described, the impression is derived, and the process may be repeated sixty or seventy times in tho hour, the plate being subjected to the ink roller for each impression. When sufficient copies are cast off, the plate is cleaned, and ready for a fresh, operation. The specimens we have seen aie equal to lithography, —lllustrated London News,