New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Saturday, February 7, 1852.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 680, 7 February 1852, Page 3

New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Saturday, February 7, 1852.

I Che last number of the Otago Witness, (Jan. 11), received by the Henrietta is as dull md uninteresting as any of the previous lumbers of that Journal, and fully susains the character for imbecility which, unler its present management, it has obtained noth in England and the adjacent colonies. f\or should we have noticed it but for a reference made to ourselves, wherein the ■vriter in the Witness talking of morality, jfcuotes Mr. Edward Gibbon 'Wakefield—an texcellent authority, it must be confessed, on Buch subjects—and then says,— 1 Indeed this view of Government patronage Ks strongly borne out by the argument in the tKSpectator— the Government organ—in the defence of a late appointment to an office in this Settlement. That paper does not defend the Individual whose character, has been attacked; t does deny the charges; but justifies the appointment on the ground that His Excellency giad reinstated a gentleman in the Commission B>f the Peace, whose character, as it affirms, not bear inspection, &c.

We must give credit to the writer of the bassage above quoted—generally a dull dog for some ingenuity in putting together a paragraph in which he has drawn so largely pn his imagination for his facts, and in which there is not a particle of truth. The Spectator is not the Government organ, nor is the argument of the Spectator such as is described by the writer p the Witness. If that worthy wishes to Inform his readers of our opinions, let pirn reprint— not misrepresent—what we have said, —which, it is very clear, he is too gull to understand. In the article he refers |o, in which we noticed an unprincipled and Injustifiable attack in the Independent on Bn.ate character, we distinctly stated we r*ould not condescend to vindicate the perlon tnus unjustly assailed, because the system If attacking private characters on the plea gf discussing political questions, such as that |ursued by the writer in the Independent, of gratifying private vindictiveness and spite gnder an affected regard for public morality »as so utterly indefensible, as to expose the fcrson guilty of such conduct to the just fcdignation of the community. We also in I few words shewed that, according to the ■ite proverb, those who live in glass houses pould not be quite so ready to throw stones a t’ llcir neighbours, and that the writer in g e Independent was, from personal coniterations of all others least qualified g act the part of public censor. It is

strange that the patriots par excellence of these Constitutional Associations, appear to think they improve their own characters by trying to damage their neighbour’s reputation, and we shall not be at all surprised to learn, (itwould be so Constitutional,') that the noisiest agitators at Dunedin have been applicants for government appointments, and that disappointment has given additional ardour to their patriotism. Neither would it excite surprise if we were to hear that the good folks of Otago should at last come to consider it a lesser evil to be without a newspaper in their settlement, than to have, one which so entirely misrepresents their opinions, and should refuse any longer to tolerate the Witness, which has become merely a vehicle for gratifying the personal animosity of the clique into whose hands it has fallen.