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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4795, 4 August 1876, Page 2

Nothing gives us greater pleasure than to assist in removing a false impression, when the same has been partly created by us. We have now, therefore, peculiar gratification in pointing out that Messrs. Stout and Sheehan, in their places in the House last night, emphatically denied being the gentlemen who sent out telegrams to Auckland and Otago, in order to procure a spontaneous exhibition of public feeling on the separation question. Although Mr. Reader: Wood threw an implied doubt on the statements of these gentlemen, we have too much respect for them to deny belief in what they said. At the same time, we are sorry that, in mentioning as we did yesterday that these gentlemen had sent out telegrams such as those noticed, we were in error, and our sorrow is more for Mr. Stout and Mr. Sheilhan than for ourselves. For we always looked upon these gentlemen as the trusted hands, as it were, of the Otago and Auckland contingents, and naturally saw nothing inconsistent with probability in their being selected for the important office of pulling the political wires in their respective provinces, by means of the telegraph wire. But it would seem that some other gentlemen were selected for this work, and that Messrs. Stout and Sheehan were left out in the cold. Smarting probably under the irritation which was natural under the circumstances, Mr. Stout turned the wrath which he felt against his own party in our direction, and in consequence used language and made statements to which it is not now worth while to reply. Mr. Sheehan was, as he usually is, good humored, and he induces us to state now that neither he nor Mr. Stout were the gentlemen who sent out the telegrams to orcler : public meetings in Auckland and Otago. As to Mr. Reader Wood’s gratuitous impertinence in • connection with this subject, all we shall say is that his imputations were as baseless as they were contemptible.