NEW ZEALAND SPECTATOR AND Cook's Strait Guardian. Saturday, December 11, 1852.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 768, 11 December 1852, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND SPECTATOR AND Cook's Strait Guardian. Saturday, December 11, 1852.

A short time since there appeared in the" Otago Witness a brief account of its various fortunes and desperate struggles to maintain vitality. As the account was drawn up by the " hero of his story " due care was taken to make it as presentable as possible ; every accident was turned to advantage, the subscribers were represented to be delighted with iheir editor, and the proprietors to mark their'satisfaction had resolved to* make him "a present off" their interest in the concern. As no other paper was published in the settlement, after the fashion in which .'ihe Witness is managed the chances of contradiction or exposure appeared to be remote-^ftut the whole affair was too gross to pass unquestioned, and a short letter from one of the principal 'proprietors,, the insertion of which the Editor could" not well refuse, exposed the deception attempted to be practised, and put the matter in its true lio-ht by showing that it was no feeling of satisfaction either with the Editor of the paper, but a dread of further calls and future pecuniary liabilities that induced him to abandon his shares as his only security against further losses. ,The Editor in his remarks in effect admits the plain tale that puts him down, and confesses that he meditates an escape himself from this/ rosperous concern at the first convenient opportunity. As far as the Witness ia concerned it is not of the slightest consequence whether it is continued or not, since we do not imagine that any importance is attached to it out of the settlement; to Otago it would be an advantage to be rid of it, since it is the vehicle of continual abuse of those who differ from the clique into whose hands the paper has fallen, and the means of keeping the community in a constant state of irritation and hot water. Our chief reason for referring to the Witness is on account ,of the fact of its being the confessed organ of the Free Church party, the means by which Captain Cargill hopes to bolster up the hopeless "cause of the Association of which he is the Agent, and which is the only pretext for his enjoying a . sinecure of £300 a year. But it is impossible that the -delusion can be maintained much longer, it is impossible, since the admitted and notorious failure of the scheme as a class' settlement, that the injustice and absurdity can be any longer permitted of forcing purchasers to contribute towards a church they neither belong to nor agree with," or of taxing the settlers to support the Free Church, merely because at the outset an Association connected themselves with .the settlement on certain conditions, every one of which they have entirely failed to fulfil. .Let the members of the Free Church support their own establishment, let them follow the example set them in this respect by other denominations of Christians in the older settlements, but after having been allowed to try their experiment under every advantage and having; completely failed, they must not expect to be supported at the expense of tte rest of the community, and prevent the future sale of lands at Otago by asking double the upset price of Crown Lands in the other settlements^ The last feather added to the burden breaks the camel's back, and if any thing could make the failure of the Association more glaring, or render the absurdity of the scheme more manifest, it is the manner in which its interests are advocated by its Agent in the Otago Witness.