THE TELEGRAPH INQUIRY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 43, 18 November 1871, Page 7

THE TELEGRAPH INQUIRY.

[lndependent.l The Telegraph Department of Nevr Zealand has recently passed through at* ordeal such as falls to the lot of few similar institutions in other countries, such, we venture to think, as very few would come out of unscathed. During the past twelve months the Department has been charged with malpractices and abuses of so heinous a nature as to be calculated, if proved, to destroy all public confidence in its trustworthiness or its usefulness. Gross partiality, habitual betrayal of secrets, falsehood, and theft have been amongst the charges levelled against it. Nor have any means that mischief and malice could invent been overlooked in fanning and circulating damaging statements. Newspapers in and out of the colony have been made the vehicle of scandalous attacks upon the Telegraph Department ; accusations against it have been sedulously circulated in telegrams and correspondents’ letters ; denunciations have been hurled upon it in editorial columns ; and even the Melbourne “Argus” and the “ Sydney Morning Herald”—journals usually too well informed to be deceived —have been prostituted by own correspondents in New Zealand, and the editors of those journals beguiled into writing articles reflecting not only upon the honesty of the Telegraph Department of New Zealand, but upon the probity of the magi? terial bench. Out of this ordeal thfi Telegraph Department has come with> out a blemish. It has triumphantly stood the crucial test of a rigid public investigation before a committee of the House of Representatives, whose deersion is that it has t©;n administeraf with perfect honesty, and that it is emi nently worthy of public confidence-; That such a result should have been arrived at is a subject for general con* gratulation. Every true colonist has,

or ought to have, a deep interest m maintaining our public institutions—and especially such an institution as the Telegraph Department—above even the faintest suspicion of corrupt administration. The report of the committee must, therefore, have been received with genuine satisfaction throughout the colony. Had there been any tangible ground for the inquiry the expense and loss of time it has entailed would not have been so much a matter for regret. But unfortunately it has been shewn by the inquiry tiiat from almost the outset or the charges being made, there was sumcient evidence before the principal accusers of the Government to compe any men, whose consciences were not warped by party bias and splenetic vindictiveness, to come forward and honestly apologise for ill-grounded suspicions, and for conclusions based upon the very lowest estimate of human nature. The f< principal accuser ” of the Government, and the person who is morally responsible for all the mischief and expense the unfounded charges have entailed is Mr George Burnett Baiton, formerly editor of the “ Otago Daily Times,” and now a practising solicitor (and therefore a gentlemen by act of Parliament) at Queenstown, in the interior of Otago. This gentleman then, who seems to be afflicted with an inborn hatred and suspicion of Governments all and sundry, contrives to obtain the editorship of the “ Otago Daily Times. Conceiving some fancied hostility on the part of Mr Vogel, he sets to woik to misuse the “ Otago Daily Times as a means of venting his personal sp.een. Utterly deficient in any practical knowledge of press telegraphy, he further conceives the brilliant notion of estab lishing a telegraph agency, and forthwith elects himself manager. His conduct in connection with this business is plainly told by Mr Reeves, one of the proprietors of the “ Lyttelton Times, the leading newspaper in Canterbury. In his sworn evidence before the Committee, Mr Beeves says :

“ I would say, simply, I believed in dealing with Mr Barton I was dealing with a gentle, man accredited by the “ Otago Daily Times to act in the matter, but n °t think he acted as a gentleman to mo.” And he then goes on to explain that having for many months been in confidential correspondence with Mr Barton regarding a proposal to establish a Press Telegraphic Agency, and that having come to a business understanding on the faith of Mr Barton’s plain dealing, Mr Barton broke faith with him, and secretly deceived him by making exclusive arrangements with the Canterbury “Press,” a newspaper in opposition to the “Lyttelton Times. Says Mr Reeves in his evidence when questioned by Mr Barton as to a conversation about the Canterbury “Press, “In talking over confidential business matters it is exceedingly probable I was foolish enough to say many things I should not have said if I had understood you as well as I do now. ... It never entered into my mind to conceive that you would deceive me.” So keenly did Mr Reeves feel the treachery of Mr Barton that be made a personal complaint to the directors of the “ Otago Daily Times” at Dunedin, who overruled Mr Barton’s action, aud effected a compromise by which the “ Lyttelton Times” was also admitted into the Association. This was Mr Barton’s conduct at the outset of forming his Press Association. We shall trace from the evidence his subsequent conduct at Wellington and Auckland.

Mr Thomas M'Kenzie, proprietor of the Wellington Independent, who also entered into negotiations with Mr Barton, with the view of connecting the Independent with the Press Association. He says:— « Mr Barton wanted £l5O a year from me to allow me to have the benefit of his telegrams. I said it was a large sum, but if he would show me what I could get for it, I ■would be willing to entertain it. After a long interview I agreed to give him £IOO a year if he supplied me, but he backed out of the office, walked out backwards, and neither agreed nor disagreed with the terms. He then went away to Auckland. Ho did not give me an answer to my offer; A steamer going to Melbourne was at the wharf at the time, and Mr Halcombe wrote to Mr Hutton of Melbourne to send the English news. If that had not been done I would not have been able |) engage a person to send the news from Melbourne in time. After an absence of about three weeks Mr Barton came back, and intimated that he had taken the “ Post ” into the confederacy, and he declined us. He told Mr Halcombe, as the latter alterwards told me,

we would be obliged to come on our knees and take what terms he would offer. We did not disclose the arrangements made with Mr Hutton in Melbourne, but we rather laughed to see how we should have been taken in if we had not made provision for getting the news. The first telegram we got was in August, and was much superior to that of the Press Association. Our telegram caused a great deal of annoyance, because the “Post” were led to suppose that they were to be the exclusive parties to have the telegrams, and also to MiBarton because he did not know how we got them.” . » In this evidence lies the whole gist or the explanation as to how Mr Barton blundered into charging the Telegraph Department and the Government with stealing his telegrams. We shall, however, refer to this subject, further on. Let us now see what was the conduct of this Mr Barton in Auckland. Mr Barton’s evidence as to his action with regard to the leading Auckland papers is flatly contradicted and conclusively disproved by Mr Vogel himself, who was the proprietor of the “ Daily Southern Cross.” Mr Barton comes down to Wellington after visiting Auckland, and endeavors to induce Mr Vogel to believe that Mr Wilson, the proprietor of the other Auckland journal, had been very anxious to enter into an agreement to connect the “ New Zealand Herald ” with the Press Association, but that he (Mr Barton) remembering a pledge he had made to Mr Vogel, had declined entering into an agreement before seeing him. Mr Vogel, in his evidence before the committee, says : “ I pulled a letter out of my pocket, and said to Mr Barton, in a manner which I could hardly help being offensive, “ Your statement does not tally with my information ; here is a message I have had from Mr Wilson to the effect—' Don’t have anything to do with Mr Barton’s arrangement.’ ”

It would be mere waste of time to expose in detail the deception and the too transparent jugglery by which Mr Barton endeavored to lure certain newspapers into joining the so-called Pi ess Association, and ultimately succeeded admirably in deceiving and over-teach-ing himself. The disappointment that he had experienced at the outset, rankling in a mind peculiarly suspicious and prone to follow its own instincts, to think evil rather than good, and to seek for an explanation of everything that surpassed its own order of intelli gence by attributing baseness and dishonesty, produced its natural effect. The Press Association, instead of becoming what it might have been, an impartial and efficient organisation fiom which both the press and the public would have derived benefit, sunk into an instrument of personal spleen andvindictiveness. And Mr Barton did not long want for active and sympathising coadjutors. He found ready instruments in others like himself who had imaginary grievances against the Government, and who threw themselves heart and soul into his cause. In a future article we propose to deal with the origin of the charges against the Government, and to show how they have been utterly disproved and dissipated by the evidence given before the committee.

We have shewn in our article of yesterday how Mr G-. B. Barton inaugurated the formation of his Press Association by a course of deception and dissimulation. There are some persons whose minds are so peculiarly constituted as to confound these questionable characteristics with business shrewdness. Their moral perceptions have become so blunted and so incapable of making those nice distinctions that govern the transactions of honest business men, that their ideas of commercial morality become altogether chaotic. ’A hethei 01 not Mr Barton’s mind is of this order we shall leave our readers to judge, aftei we have fairly placed the facts before them. Mr Barton appears to have resumed the editorial chair of the Otago Daily Times’’ with a firm conviction that his dispositions had been so masterly aud so effectual as to entirely pieclude the bare possibility of failure, oi of any newspaper in New Zealand maintaining its existence for any length of time unless it believed in the immaculateness of his telegrams. But Mr Barton was only a man —rather a peculiar sort of a man, it is true —but, as a man, exposed to all the accidents and vicissitudes that disturb the calculations of the greatest genius. The ever memorable Bth of September, big with the fate of Press telegraphy, arrived, and

the telegrams that were to establish MiBarton’s fame throughout New Zealand arrived also at Hokitika. The Suez telegrams of English news were transmitted to all the newspapers connected with the Press Association except the “ Evening Post.” The intelligence of this frightful calamity seems to have fallen upon Mr Barton like a thunderbolt. He was immediately aroused into vigorous action. ITe tells us in his evidence that “we —not meaninghimself editorially—-but simply himself and his agents at Wellington :

Wo afterwards ascertained that the telegrams had been kept in the Wellington office, from the time at which they arrived, which must have been at twelve o clock on the night of the Bth September, untii seven or eight, o’clock next morning.

Here was a splendid opportunity for Mr Barton. At once he seems to have begun to weave in the intricate recesses of his own mind an ingenious theory upon the matter. He says :

Now-, it seemed perfectly clear to me, as editor of the “Otago Daily Times” at that time, that the telegram addressed to the “ Evening Post” —an opposition paper had been delayed improperly by toe Telegraph Office for purposes which I could only explain as political purposes ; that is, to save the “ Independent”— a Ministerial journal the humiliation of a defeat upon such an important occasion, the Telegraph Department had been instructed to delay those telegrams in the Wellington office so that the “ Wellington Independent” might come out next morning with its telegrams at the same time as the “ Post.” That was the interpretation I put upon it.

And now how did Mr Barton come to this grave conclusion ? Did he, as an honest inquirer after truth, set his mind to soberly and calmly examine into the circumstances ? or did he, his eyes being blinded and his mind diseased by prejudice, spleen, and inordinate self-sufficiency, recklessly blunder into making scandalous charges against the Government, and into endeavoring to undermine the public institutions of the country ? It seems abundantly clear that having persuaded himself of the absolute infallibity of his “ interpretation,” his “ theory,” his “ inferences,” and his “ tissue of fiction woven by himself upon (i false basis of facts,” as Mr Vogel very aptly termed it during' the inquiry, he gave himself little further trouble upon the matter. Mr Barton appears to have deemed inquiry utterly beneath the consideration of bis great genius, beyond such consideration . as might be bestowed upon it in writing scauda’ous articles in the “ Otago Daily Times,” a work in which he had the cordial aid and sympathy of his dutiful confreres in Wellington. These kindred spirits, working in the closest harmony, exhausted all the devices of their subtile skid in agitating their insupportable grievances. The Government and the Telegraph Department were represented as being Protean in’ corruption and dishonesty, and Mr Barton’s wrongs, what with their cropping up in telegrams, correspondents’ letters, and leading articles, assumed all the importance of a grave public question. Whether Mr Barton ever took the trouble to ascertain precisely how the alleged detention of the “ Evening Post’s” telegrams had occurred, is doubtful, because facts arc disclosed io the evidence before the committee, the knowledge of which must have disabused his mind of the suspicion lie entertained against the Government. Either he knew these facts or ho was ignorant -of them. II he was aware of them when reiterating the charges against the Government, then we say he was guilty of a mean and dishonorable abuse of his functions as a journalist, and of converting what may have in the first instance been a hasty conclusion into a base falsehood. On the other hand if he was kept in ignorance of the facts by his _ active Wellington agent, and his sympathising friend, then these two must have grossly and unscrupulously deceived him iu order to further their own selfish and dishonorably ends What says -Mr Barton when questioned by Mr Vogel? One of Mr Barton’s great points was that the “Evening Post’ should have received its telegrams early in the night because the “ Hawkes’ Bay Herald,” of Napier, —and therefore beyond Wellington, through which the same message would have to pass from Hokitika —had published the telegrams in its morning’s issue. Mr Barton was questioned by Mr Vogel as to this matter,

and we find the following in the evidence :

In saying that the Minister or head of the department gave instructions for detaining the telegrams, had you any actual evidence of that or is that merely an inference. I allude to your statement that the “ Evening Post” telegram was detained ?—What I should say is this, that the inferences I drew were drawn from the usual practice of the Telegraph Department, and my knowledge of facts as the editor of a paper. I think you will admit that the editor of a paper, and one who has had some experience, is in a special position for judging and forming opinions that is not open to other people. Had you any actual evidenco or was it simply general knowledge that led you to make that inference that the telegram to the “ Evening Post” was detained, and that to the “ Hawke’s Bay Herald” sent on ?—I obtained knowledge directly and indirectly—general knowledge. I had no actual evidence of the facts, but I believed them. In fact Mr Barton had no evidence whatever, and his belief was simply pure faith —faith in the infallibility of his own “ inferences.” The special circumstances which ought to have been communicated toMr Barton, and which, had they been communicated to him, must have disabused his mind were those dragged out of Mr Gifford by Mr Lemon.

Mr Gifford admitted that he made an arrangement with “ somebody” at the Telegraph Office, but was not able to remember who that somebody was. Mr Smith, having a better memory, comes forward, identifies himself as that somebody, and swears that Mr Gifford declined to receive the telegram slip by slip as it was delivered from the instrument, preferring to have it entire. We give the following from Mr Smith’s evidence :

You mean a slip as delivered out ?—As it was finished from the instrument. He told me distinctly lie did not wish it that way. I asked him then if he preferred having two or three slips at a time or all together. Do you state positively you asked Mr Gifford whether he would have the telegram in slips or all together ? —Most positively. What reply did he make? —He said it was of no iise to him if it came late at night, and if I sent it, in the morning it would be in time enough for publication. As near as I can recollect, we sent it up to him next morning in time for an extra that morning. I did net give Mr Gifford that telegram. He said he would be content to receive it entire ? —He did not wish it that night at all, because it would bo too late. I put the question distinctly to him, would he have it slip by slip? and when he said he would not have it in that way, that satisfied me it, did not matter when lie got it. Was the telegram delivered to the “ Independent” before the “ Post”?—l believe the “Post” telegram was delivered before that for the “ Independent,” because the boy took both telegrams out; at the same time. The boy delivered it to Mr Gifford at the hotel, and of course the boy can give evidence of that. Mr Gifford was not prepared to deny (hat such an arrangement was made, but merely alleges some other arrangement that he had made himself and which, he seems to have thought, the Telegraph Department must adapt itself to. Mr Smith’s evidence is corroborated by a messenger in the Telegraph Office, named Charles Hill. But the charge of wilful detention of the “ Evening Post’s” telegram is completely shattered by Mr Lemon, who states in his evidence that he instructed the operator to receive all telegrams from Hokitika that night. The charge against the Government of detaining the “ Post’s” telegram is, therefore, proved to have been utterly unfounded, and we purpose showing in a future article the reasons that influenced the committee in pronouncing the charge of appropriating another telegram sent, to the same journal to be equally baseless.