To the Editor of the New Zealand Spectator. Wellington, January 18th, 1849.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume V, Issue 362, 20 January 1849, Page 4

To the Editor of the New Zealand Spectator. Wellington, January 18th, 1849.

Sin, — As a would be passive though not an uninterested observer of events which happen in our small community, I was present at the Annual Meeting of the subscribers to the Horticultural Society held at Barrett's Hotel on Wednesday evening last, and I must confess that I felt some amusement, mingled with a degree of painful feeling, at the manner in which an attempt was made to stigmatize the Secretary and Treasurer of that Society, and to eject those gentlemen from the offices, which as far as I can learn, they have worthily filled. I was more pained at the cool assurance with which a member of the Committee endeavoured inferentially to show that the scanty exhibition of the day before- was entirely owing to the fact that such bad officers had been elected, entirely forgetting or appearing to forget that any thing reflecting on the management of the Society falls as ' heavily on the Committee as on the more active officers, and entirely suppressing that which to every common sense observer was plain and palpable, viz. : that the long continued dry weather which we have of late experienced, together with the unusual severity of the wind at this season, has rendered almost every garden in the place bare of every production worth exhibiting, but perhaps the worthy JgesonderJ ge5onder of tyfr. Wallace's motion would imply that men who accept such offices, should at the same time get themselves appointed cldrks of the weather, and I think that some such proposition would have been a worthy rider to such a motion. A fitting pendant to the motion however was found in an accusation against the Treasurer of having uuduly influenced the judges in their awards 'on some former occasions, and these accusations weie most unaccountably made by the judges themselves. 0 worthy judges ! most upright judges ! to have been cognisant of such unfair conduct for a period of some twelve or fifteen months, or perhaps longer, and to have never whispered it to mortal ear before yesterday at noon. These worthies are, as Jonathan would say in a " pretty considerable fix," they must either prove their asseition, and so prove .their utter un worthiness and condemnation, or they 'must rest under tlie imputation of having brought forward an unjust and slanderous accusation. I • wish them joy of either alternative. Now can any reasonable person doubt that a strong political feeling is at the bottom of all this, although the parties have not the manliness and sincerity to avow it, and can any unprejudiced mind not believe that the introduction of party spirit and political feeling into all or any of our social institutions will prove a blighting curse to our community ? That the attempt at least has been made to introduce and uphold this baneful principle, is proved by the arrogant and unauthorized assertion, in the name of the public, attributed to the ostensible and acting mover in all the late factious opposition, that'" the Nominees were to be put offof every think." I am, sir, Your obedient servant, A Lookeb On.