ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 657, 31 July 1852, Page 3

ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor of the New Zealander. Sin, — Those who may happen to peruse the "report" of the proceedings of the Municipal Council of Wednesday last, 1 in to-day's Southern Cross, will doubtless imagine it to be one of the travesties Avith which the Editor of that paper now and then indulges its readers. But, alas! alas ! 'tis an o'er true tale. The Sonambulist, bent on its own destruction, rushed to its inglorious end, and did, really and truly perform the tragedy of its own disgrace in manner as in the Cross reports, WITH A VERY IMPORTANT EXCEPTION. The Cross says " Councillor Abraham having resumed his scat, and no member appealing inclined to reply., AFrr.R a short time took Ms hat and slowly left the Council — Alderman O'Neill following in a precisely similar manner." This is grossly incorrect. Alderman O'Neill having, in a most illjudged, and illiberal manner, attacked our highly respected Lieutenant-Governor, being the head of "the Executive of New Ulster," which he stigmatized as " rotten at the core," and some one of his own colleagues, as "a traitor" to the Burgesses (as the case might be), was followed by Councillor Abraham, who lashed right and left, first at the Colonial Secretary for having the impertinence to make a suggestion to ' the honourable council, and then at the Mayor for inviting them to awake from their slumbers to consider if it were not worth while to do something by way of a precautionary measure against ourselves, our wives, and families being destroyed by fire, or ridden over by furious or drunken equestrians — and who then, after a reference to "old women's pattens," and other articles of female apparel, generally, in polite society, unmentionaple, did not give an opportunity to the Mayor or any member to explain or reply — but putting on his hat, and his hands under his coat tails, in this elegant and refined manner, passed the Chairman and his brother Councillors, till he came to Alderman O'Neill, who followed his leader with beaver on, — thus at once destroying the quorum of the Council and the opportunity to reply to their ill-natured and unjustifiable attacks. The whole affair reminded one of scenes sometimes witnessed in the Seven Dials, or other low neighbourhoods of London, when a man of quiet, elegant, and gentlemanly appearance intrudes on scenes sacred to filth and riot, upon which he is forthwith assaulted by missiles of dirt and rubbish by two or three ragged and noisy urchins* Svho then scamper off to their own dirty alleys to avoid the threatening uplifted cane, and sally out, if need be, reinforced with some big bullying braggart of a brother. — I am, &c, A Spectator of the late Deplorable Exhibition. Auckland, July ,30, 1852.