To the Editor of the New Zealand Spectator.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 304, 28 June 1848, Page 3

To the Editor of the New Zealand Spectator.

Sir, — I applied to you on Saturday last for the name of the correspondent B, whose letter appears in your paper of that date, and you have declined to give it up. In his letter he says I was compelled to give up my name. That statement is not true. The prudence of writing what will give offence may be questionable, but the meanness of refusing to acknowledge the authorship when required is not. Herein your correspondent and I differ. Nor is the excuse which you have made for him available, for although no name is mentioned in his letter, he has taken care to prevent mistake as to the person against whom it was directed, by refering to a particular employment. The statements he has made reflecting upon me can only injure the cause he intended to serve. They are so notoriously untrue that doubt will be cast upon the sincerity of his voucher for the private character of another, which character must be rather tender if we are to judge from the exhibition of soreness as the effect of a blow not intended to hit it. But it is easy to see that this is a mere ruse to withdraw attention from the facts stated in my letters ; it is the case of the sturdy beggar who, when they wanted to put him in the stocks for a vagrant, cried out, " Oh, my leg." He states that the proceedings in the Resident Magistrate's Court are no hole and corner proceedings, nor conducted at a distance from public observation. How easy, then, it would have been for him, if my statements were not true, to shew that such was the case. But he prefers to dilate upon motives, which is a still easier method. And he selects your paper as the vehicle of his misrepresentations, knowing that some of your readers will have no opportunity of judging for themselves of the statements upon which he animadverts. Ido not say that was his motive. He may be an invalid compelled to rely for his facts upon unprincipled informants. I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, O. P.S. — Is it not pitiful to observe a man of very superior education testing the moral truth of a statement by the rules of the English Grammar? If the principle of noscitur a sociis be correct, an uneducated man will have little chance in the Resident Magistrate's Court. We need no longer be surprized at the frequent announcement in the English newspapers, "The Schoolmaster is abroad." We have him here. Wellington, June 26, 1848.