"HAWERA ON CROMBIE BROWN."

Patea Mail, Volume V, Issue 496, 31 January 1880, Page 2

"HAWERA ON CROMBIE BROWN."

(To the Editor of the Patka Mail.) Siii, —Li your issue of the 24th instant, you do me the honor to publish a letter under tile above somewhat extraordinary title, signed “One of 0.8.’s Dirty Govt. Tools,” and purporting to be a condemnatory review of certain portions of a series of letters relative to this district, which appeared in the columns of the Lyttelton Times a few months ago. After some hesitation as to whether it is worth the trouble, 1 have decided to reply to that letter. And, in the first place, let me say that I will not insult the people of llawera by supposing for one moment that they have chosen for their mouth-piece one who is so ignorant of the etiquette of journalism as coarsely to attack by name a writer for the Press, or, leaving done so, is so cowardly as to suppress his own. En passant, I may say with regard to his offer to send me Ids “ card,” that my profession as a special correspondent perforce brings me into contact with so many “ queer cards,” that in this particular instance, having a choice, I decline the honor, i will also add, before passing on to notice the writer’s specific charges, that I will not condescend to refer to those portions of his letter which are simply vulgar abuse, nor to that particularly libellous portion intended as a covert insinuation upon my private character, and with respect to which the proprietor of the Patua Mail will hear in the course of a few days from my solicitors in Wellington.

Keferring to me, the writer of the letter to which 1 am replying, expresses the hope “ that if he has any sense of justice, he will be just enough to refute his statements that led readers of the Greenstone Island paper to imagine that the majority of the residents in this frontier settlement were a drunken lot, together with ‘ dirty Government tools, 1 to use his own words, (one of whom, by the bye, acted as his guide and interpreter at Parihaka).” I simply challenge my assailant to quote a single sentence of any of my letters which conveys the idea that in my opinion “ the majority” of the residents arc “ a drunken lot” ; but as ho signs his own letter “ One of C.B.’s Dirty Government Tools,” I can only accept this as an ingenuous acknowledgement that so far as one individual is concerned, I was correct. Following the order of the charges which, in the name of the people of llawera, have been brought against me, I find the hope expressed that “ Mr C. 13. will not find it requisite to carry a revolver to protect himself from the renegade whiles and half-caste scoundrels that infected the Wairnate Plains.” The italics are those of your correspondent, not mine, and although the sentence immediately following is, “ I am quoting C.B.’s own words,” I do not find in the letter as published by you those inverted commas which every sehool-boy knows mark a quoted sentence. Let me, however, attribute this to ignorance, not to wilful misrepresentation. Perhaps I am the more inclined to bo lenient here, because I am free to admit that upon this particular point, I—a complete stranger in the district—was misled by one whom I believed to be a Hawera settler, and consequently au fait as to the characteristics of the district. But as f long ago honorably retracted what, under a mistaken idea, I wrote, it is unnecessaiy now to repeat the very ample apology I then made.

I will not enter into y'ottr correspondent’s opinions as to Parihaka and To Wliiti, for the simple reason that from first to last there is nothing in his letter to show that he is capable of forming any opinion. I only deal with inventions which are put forth by him as facts. The most serious charge of all brought against me is, in my opinion, embodied in the following words, We don’t like you Co come to our houses as settlers, and drink our liquor and eat our dinners, and then give such a poor account of us to the Greenstone Islanders.” If this means anything, it means that [ accepted of the hospitality' of settlers, and repaid it with misrepresentation and ingratitude. In reply, I can only say that I hold the receipt of the landlord of the hotel at which 1 stayed (Mr Lloyd) for every meal which I sat down to in the Ilawcra District, and that I never drank a glass ut wine at the expense of any resident which was not paid for fully in, as it is termed in th« colonies, ,l returning the compliment.” It is most repugnant to me to have to refer to such matters, but I appeal to every right-thinking man in Hawcra to say whether, under the circumstances of this vile attack, 1 am not in self-defence bound to do so.

There is one tiling for which my thanks are due to ‘‘One of C.B.’s Dirty’ Govt. Tools.” He lias given me an opportunity' of endeavouring to remove an impression against mo which a small section of the community' has recently' been most assiduously endeavouring to foster —viz., that I have branded the whole community as composed of “ renegade whites and halfcaste scoundrels.” Nothing could have been further from my thoughts. To say' so would have been simply' untrue—a lie. At the same time, I am not afraid to repeat that there are sucli —as must always be the case on the outskirts of civilisation--in the district ; and neither sucli letters as that under notice, nor the cowardly insults of public-house loafers, to which I have recently been subjected, will prevent my asserting this as often as I think lit. livery community has its special evil, duo to local circumstances : this is the special evil of Havvera. It is not the general characteristic of the place and the people : it is the social excrcscnco which at once strikes a stranger, and which, if the stranger bo a public journalist, be is bound, in the discharge of his duty, if lie be not an arrant coward, fearlessly 7 to comment upon. Although I have replied to the letter so \ cry appropriately’ signed “ One of C.B.'a Dirty Govt. Tools,” I will not again notice any letter to which the writer has not the moral courage to sign his name.—l am, S. CROU.MBIE-BHOWN. Normauby, Jan. 25, 1380. P.S. —I find I have omitted to mention that part of the letter in which the writer says that I stated the distance between Hawera and Opunake to be sixty miles. As 1 have not a copy of the paper before me, I do not know whether he is quoting correctly or not; but surely no one but an idiot would dream that such a manifest absurdity was not cither the result of a slip of the pen, or a compositor’s or proof reader’s blunder. Yon, fcjir, as a fellowjournalist, must be fully aware how, in dealing with figures, such mistakes frequently occur. S. C.-B.