Untitled

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 744, 1 June 1853, Page 2

Long as the interval between the announcement of Candidates for the Snpcrinlcndency and the election itself seemed at first, the steady progress of time has brought us into the month in which the actual issue must be tried and decided. As we intimated in our last, the nomination is to take place on Monday the 20lh instant, and we are now enabled to add that the Polling is fixed for Thursday the 30th instant, —the term of ten dnvs beinir considered IUUo as could be safely allowed, considering the possibility of unforeseen delays in communicating with the Bay of Islands and other out-lying districts. Within this month of June therefore the important question must be formally determined.

Of the result,—in the election of Lieut.Colonel Wynyard,—the information we have received from various parts of the Province docs not warrant our entertaining any reasonable doubt. Indeed, the Requisition to that gentleman showed an array of the intelligence, the wealth, the genuine respectability, and the influence of the constituency, such as it would have seemed impossible to vanquish by any fair means. We have never forgotten, however, and wo do not now forget, that there are some engaged on the opposing side who think that everything is fair in such a contest, —or, at ail events, who act as if they thought so. No effort, we arc persuaded, will be left untried to secure for Mr. Brown, —we will not say success, for however it may suit the purpose of his canvassers to speak as if they deemed his return probable, they can scarcely be so blind to the existing stale of feeling amongst the electors as to calculate on that, but at least such a number of votes as, until the voting papers come to be analysed and ar-

ranged in classes, so as to admit of a comparison with the character of the supportlhat will be given to Colonel Wynyard, may cover the defeat, and gloss over in some measure the presumption of Mr. Brown in seeking the office of Head of this Province. It is therefore no lime for Colonel Wynyard’s supporters to relax their endeavours, or to lapse into a satisfied security that their work is done. Remembering that, for the present honour, and the future welfare and peace of the Province, it is requisite—not merely that the Colonel should be at the head of the p 0 H 7 __but that he should be placed there with such a majority as will teach the ambitious and selfish man who has necessitated this contest how cgrcgiously he has miscalculated the estimate formed of his pretensions, every day of this month should be diligently employed in diffusing information, lebutling the misstatements which Mr. Brown’s newspaper and the less scrupulous of his friends are assiduously labouring to scatter through the country, and plainly setting before the minds of the electors the results to the progress and prosperity of Auckland and its neighbourhood which are involved in this issue,— results which present considerations so strong and striking that every really patriotic well-wisher to the land of his adoption must acknowledge their force. Many of the comments which we might otherwise have, ere now, felt it our own duty to make, have been anticipated by the copious correspondence which has appeared in our columns, and which was only a portion of the mass of communications daily pouring in upon us. Without, of course, identifying ourselves with every view or expression contained in those letters, we can have no misgiving in referring to them as containing an overwhelmningdcvelopmentof the unfitness of Mr. Brown for the position to which he aspires. We have the more willingly given precedence to the statements of our correspondents, (postponing such employment of those and other facts as we may feel called on to make), because several of the writers are amongst the earliest settlers in the district, and have had opportunities of observing from the first that course of conduct on the partof Mr. Brown which some, more recently arrived, have been partially or wholly beguiled into judging of by Mr. Brown’s own egotistical representations of bis u services —and, moreover, because some of them arc new correspondents,—-at least so far as our columns are concerned,— being either persons who did not usually seek to diffuse their views through a newspaper medium, or, (as in some instances we know to be the ease) persons who, when they did write, made Mr. Brown’s own journal their channel of access to the public mind. There are men amongst them who know, of their personal knowledge, ihccircumstanccs by which they have illustrated their remarks, and other circumstances 100 , which, if occasion requires, can be adduced to verify their conclusions. Let any reader whose mind is yet wavering, re-peruse these revelations, and then, if he will, turn to the columns of the Southern Cross for the replies ; and let him form his judgment from observing the wretched abortiveness of the attempts to evade the force of the objections, and the paltry spirit of recriminative bitterness in which personal attacks on the avowed or supposed writers have been substituted for—what the case really demanded, but unfortunately for Mr. Brown did not admit — an intelligible and satisfactory answer to distinctly advanced evidence that Mr. Brown is not fit to be the chosen Superintendent of the Province of Auckland.

And yet, if Mr. Brown’s claims have not been exhibited in a brilliant light, and Colonel Wynyard’s cried down into insignificance or worse, it has been from no fastidious delicacy or lack of effort in the pages of Mr. Brown’s Southern Cross. This is a point which suggests considerations worthy of notice. Mr. Brown has a newspaper of his own, —a “chariot” which he has boasted both his ability and his determination to drive at his will. Now, we have known instances in which a proprietor or an editor of a public journal was candidate in a severe election struggle; but we certainly never knew or heard of an instance in which that circumstance was taken advantage of so meanly as, during the present contest, it has been in Mr. Brown’s newspaper. To cite a single example of what we alludeto; —twoor three months since, Mr. Henry Parkcs, proprietor of the Sydney Empire, contested with Alderman Thurlow the representation of the city in the Legislative Council. Let any reader who has access to a lilc of the Empire examine its pages during the whole continuance of the struggle, and let him contrast Mr. Parkes’s almost sensitive avoidance of all that could be construed into an abuse of his control over a daily paper, for the elevation of himself or the disparagement of Mr. Thurlow 7 , with the torrents, of eulogy on Mr. Brown and of abuse of Colonel Wynyard and his supporters with which Mr. Brown’s Southern Cro* overflows; and he will, even from that <3iie contrast, obtain no trifling assistance to understand and appreciate Mr. Brown, as he reallv is.

[l would be almost an impertinence to say that if Colonel Wynyard were similarly circumstanced in this matter, he would not so degrade the honor of the press or his own honor. But he docs not possess the power. Although we esteem it a privilege and a public duly to render that gentleman’s cause such aid as we can afford in opposition to Mr. Brown, we do it after our own fashion, and without either control or necessary concurrence on his part. There is a marked distinction therefore between the articles or idlers on the election in the New-Zealanuer and those in the Southern Cross. We need scarcely say Colonel Wynyard is in no sense responsible for ihearticleswepublishasagainst Mr. Brown: probably many of our readers see them before he has any knowledge of their existence. Can this be said with respect to Mr. Brown and the publications in his Southern Cross directed against the Colonel and his friends? Who will doubt that if Mr. Brown docs not himself write them at least they come forth with his knowledge and sanction? And if we could suppose Mr. Brown placed in the Superintendency, there would be this amongst the many hindrances to his occupying that office either

comfortably or usefully asrespects not a few of those who would be placed under his “ Superintendency”—that his direct and efficient connection with injurious or offensive attacks upon them or their relatives or friends was not only known to themselves but was a matter of universal notoriety because those attacks had been made and kept up in a journal of which he is not merely the owner but the ruler, and through which he has long “ superintended” with no benignant eye all who did not bow at the footstool of bis vanity and selfishness.

The foregoing observations had been written and forwarded to the printer before we read the very characteristic article in the Southern Cross of yesterday, which opens with calling this journal “ Lieut.-Colonel Wynyard’s newspaper,” and throughout maintains that form of speech, the idea being evidently borrowed by our contemporary, (as many ideas better worth dishonest appropriation have been) from ourselves,— and the impression sought to bo made on those unacquainted with the facts as evidently being, that the Auckland newspapers are figuratively spoken of as belonging to th e Candidates whom they respectively support. It would be very convenient for Mr. Brown to have this believed, for he and his principal friends are shrewd enough to be aware that his cause sustains injury from the personal attacks on electors with which the columns of the Southern Cross teem, and that some of the undecided may be determined against him—if not by private sympathy with the objects of his sarcasm and ridicule (although this feeling is not without its influence),—yet by a more general conviction that it would not be for the tranquility of the district, or likely to promote the pleasant working of the New Constitutional machine, if the highest office in its Provincial direction was filled by a man whom many of the colonists must unavoidably regard as having, either actually or virtually, insulted and vilified persons whom they esteem or love. But the “dodge” is too transparent to gain its end. Most of our citizens are sufficiently cognizant of the true state of the case to be fully aware that the New-Zealander is not “Colonel Wynyard’s newspaper,” in the sense in which the Southern Cross is “Mr. William Brown’s newspaper,” or in any sense at all, unless it be the metaphorical sense to which we have alluded. Colonel Wynyard has no property in the New-Zea-lander, no right or power of control over its course in his own or any other case, no means of knowing beforehand what will or will not appear in its columns, or of influencing it to turn a hair’s breadth from the line which we may ourselves think proper,—voluntarily and from a principle of public duty,—to mark out. It is notorious that in all these respects, Mr. Brown stands in a directly opposite relation to the Southern Cross, He is notoriously the proprietor of that journal, and much of his claim to support is made, by bis more zealous than discreet friends, to rest upon that fact. Although on the hustings he found it convenient to deny being its Editor, yet he wrote to Earl Grey that he was its “real Editor,” and in anarticlerecently quoted from the Southern Cress by one of our correspondents, the public were vauntinglyas well as explicitly told that “the Proprietor is the Sole Editor of the Cross:” —with the further information, “ We are able to conduct our own chariot, and are not compelled to give the reins to another, and be dragged along at Ihe mercy of the driver that may be hired for the day.” This was in 1848, but we happen to have sufficient evidence of Mr. Brown’s continued “superintendence” of the Cross nearly to the present day. For instance, we have seen a letter of very recent date, (months later than the Election of August last when Mr. Brown hazarded a public declaration that he “had not the honor of bcingEdilor of the Cross ”)—in which he admits with the most unmistakeable distinctness his control over that journal. It was written in reply to an indignant remonstrance from a gentleman who conceived himself injuriously alluded to in a letter in the Cross, and who, having other reasons for knowing that Mr. Brown was its “superintendent 1 ” wrote directly to him. Did Mr. Brown venture to reiterate on that occasion what he had said on the hustings? Nay, but—after trying to defend the offensive letter—he says, “ 1 gave it a most casual read over before putting it into the hands of the printer, and did not perceive,” etc.: and again, “ They,” (the remarks which had been published in the CrossJj “were put into rny oicn hands the day before publication, and, after a casual look over, were handed by myself to the printers.” Here then is a statement in bis own handwriting which fixes on Mr. Brown the responsibility, not merely of a supervision of the concern, but of an individual control over the “Original Correspondence” department, in which, as is well known, some of the worst personalities issued by the Gross from time to time have appeared. The correspondence had no character of confidence about it that would prohibit our making use of the letter before us in elucidation of the truth, as it was thoroughly formal , both in the complaint made by the aggrieved party to Proprietor-Editor, and in the reply given by Mr. Brown in that capacity. We leave it to Mr. Brown and his advocates to reconcile if they can this statement and others of a siffli" lar kind which, as they must be aware, d would not be difficult to produce, with the disclaimer on the hustings in reply to Mr. W. Forsyth’s question whether Mr. Brown was Editor of the Cross. We have been induced to go into the matter in so much detail in order to expose the clumsy artifice of calling the New t -Zealander “Colonel Wy l1 * yard’s newspaper,” as if no more was meant in speaking of the Cross as Mr. Browns paper than that it supported his claims to the Superintendency as we do those of Colonel Wynyard. There should be no misconception in the public mind as to the relative posi lion of the two Candidates in this matter, —if any reader objects to anything he may have seen or may now see in the remarks on election matters made in the New-Zealandeb, —whetherin editorialarliclesorby correspondents —he is to remember that Colonel M

yard is in no way responsible for ibose remarks; —but, on the oilier hand, the reader will be fully warranted in laying at the door of Mr. William Brown the merits or demerits of whatever appears in his Southern Cross, sceino that he presides over that journal, and undoubtedly has— what Colonel Wynyard I,us not in the case of the New-Zealander — full power to prevent, if he pleases, offensive attacks upon those over whom he aspires to rule as their Superintendent. With regard to the general matter of the very long and very lumbering article of yesterday, we deem it scarcely necessary to say a word. It professes to be a vindication of the calumnious manifesto directed against Colonel Wynyard in the Cross of Friday, and a reply to our refutation of that manifesto in oar issue of the following morning. But, in truth, as every attentive reader must at once perceive, it is, in effect, an admission throughout of the correctness of our statements, and, in some instances, amusingly confirmatory of our accuracy. It would be a mere waste of time, and an unjustifiable trespass on the reader’s patience, to travel o\cr again the ground we occupied on Saturday, and we can unhesitatingly refer to our paper of that day for a complete refutation of the charges which yesterday Mr. Brown’s newspaper has, with a shuttling and cquivocation worthy of the cause in which it isengaged, endeavoured to support. We said on Saturday that the article in the Cross of the previous day was “from end to end little other than a tissue of misrepresentations.” We sav so still, with no other alteration than that —after seeing yesterday’s Cross— we print the descriptive words in capitals instead of small letters.