New Zealand Spectator AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Saturday, March 1, 1851.
Ths Nelson Examiner of Feb. 15, (the last j received) in giving a “short summary” of . the proceedings connected with the late Public Meeting in this place, has endeavoured to convey to its readers such an unfair and one-sided impression of the state of public feeling in Wellington, that we deem it advisable to offer a few observations on his statement. After quoting the Independent's version of the affair, which the Examiner states “is confirmed by printed letters, and by private ones received in this settlement,” of the interruption “by the hangers on of Government and Maories ” offered to the “speakers of the popular side,” our contemporary says that only “a sort of half denial ” is given by the Spectator to the story told by the Independent, and employs such art as he is master of to make the worse appear the better side, and to palm off these inventions for facts. Now seeing that we stigmatized these reports at the time as the unfounded reckless assertions of defeated and desperate men, and proved these reports to be such as we described them, we think such language would hardly be considered by any but the writer in aminer as “ a sort of half denial,” still less would any but a thorough going partizan place the slightest confidence in the statements published in the Independent, or affect to consider the Faction, in however remote or faint a degree, as representing “ the popular side,” after the spontaneous demonstrations signed by four hundred and twenty settlers at so short a notice repudiating their pretensions. Not to adduce further proof, if our contemporary could be transported butfor one short half-hour to Wellington, and see how thoroughly chop fallen and discomfited his heroes are, how completely they • have become the laughing stocks of the Settlement, if he could but see, as we have seen, them wandering on the beach, the ghosts of their former selves, the conceit thoroughly taken out of them by recent i events.
So faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone;
he'would never lacerate their feelings, he would never mortify their vanity so much as to hint at the slightest pretensions on their part to popularity. But the writer in the Examiner talks of our attempting to damage Mr. Fox’s character, and babbles about “perversion of facts,” "political strife sinking into private abuse,” &c. It is pretty generally believed that Mr. Fox, while at Nelson, was a frequent contributor to the Nelson Examiner. On his removal to Wellington, his influence with that journal does not appear to have altogether ceascu, as those articles in, the Independent, reported to have been written by Mr. Fox, might be known, among other tokens, to be his, by their being duly reprinted in the Examiner, while the editor was prepared to applaud them to the very echo as most able productions; and his gross personalities, directed against the officers of government and the non-official members of Council, received the warm sympathy and approval of our contemporary, So notoiious has been the subserviency of that journal to the interests of the Company and its Principal Agent, that a letter from one of his correspondents. in the very number to which we
refer, accuses the editor of carefully inserting “ every expression in praise of Mr. Fox bv himself, and of excluding every censure passed upon him by others,” referring to “ some most excellent strictures upon his conduct in the Spectator,” which, “as far as the Examiner was concerned, its subscribers must remain perfectly ignorant of. It would have been more to the purpose if the editor of the Examiner, instead of talking about personalities, perversion of facts, die., had given his readers an opportunity of judging for themselves by publishing the articles to which he refers, and still more to the purpose if he could have refuted the charges we have preferred against his patron. Mr. Fox alone has “ damaged” his own character; he has been his own worst enemy, we have only recorded and made public the factsconnectedwiththe disgraceful jobs which in his official capacity he has committed, particularly that most flagrant of all—the Duppa Compensation Job, which neither he nor any of his supporters have been able in any way to excuse or defend. But what shall be said of the Nelson Examiner, the only journal published in that settlement, piquing itself on its fairness and impartiality, and yet allowing so rank a job as this to be perpetrated under its very nose, without a single word of reprobation, without the faintest allusion to a transaction so discreditable to its patron, so injurious to the settlement of which it affects to be the impartial organ!
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New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 582, 1 March 1851, Page 2
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794New Zealand Spectator AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Saturday, March 1, 1851. New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 582, 1 March 1851, Page 2
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