THE PRESS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5428, 20 August 1878, Page 2

THE PRESS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES. Sm, —The temperate letter of your correspendent “ Y,” in this day’s Times, gives me an opportunity that I am glad to embrace, with with your permission, to explain what I meant by my remarks in the House on the New Zealand Press as contracted with that of England. The immeasurable difference in the effective power of the two consists not so much in their different quality, which is not always even perceptible, as in their different positions and surroundings. The words I used of the English Press were not “pure and incorruptible," but “incorruptible and insuppressible,” and even those terms were not intended to apply to any named paper, but to the English Press as a whole. The Times or the Daily News could be bought at a price, and that price quite within the means of English parties ; but in England the purchase would do the buyer no good, as if gagged for a single week in the cause of truth and liberty their influence would begone, and untrammelled journals would at once take up the position the purchased organs had forsaken. It is in this sense only that tile English Press is truly incorruptible and insuppressible, and no paper in this country could attain the same position until surrounded by something like the same circumstances. With a few black exceptions I think wo have much reason to beproud of ourNowZealand Press, and even here it is worth more than all our other institutions for the protection of real liberty; but I do not think any one should claim for it the entire independence which the English Press, and that Press only, has attained. My argument was that until the Press here attains that perfection of liberty and insuppressibility which is really only attainable in a large and rather dense population in a state of high civilisation, and which now so perfectly secures the liberty of England, we should not rashly throw away any of these minor safeguards to truth and liberty which our forefathers, with their less perfect Press, believed to be so important and essential. I am sorry .to say that I could accept your correspondent’s challenge and give him some well authenticated “flagrant and glaring cases,” but the same thing could be done even in England, and would not therefore support my argument at all, nor attain any object I aimed at in making the assertion I did.—l am, &0., Alfced Saunders. August 19.