THE COROMANDEL MAIL GOES INTO MOURNING.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 420, 18 October 1876, Page 2

THE COROMANDEL MAIL GOES INTO MOURNING.

The following spirited and satirical reply of the Editor of the Coromandel Mail, to the NewZealandßank agent,in that township, is one of Snyder’s happiest efforts. He laments over the biogtry and grovelling attempts at coercion, of the idiot who indulges a petty spite by the withdrawal of his paltry subscription, probably many quarters in arrear. With a little alteration of names and circumstances, Snyder's lament suits, most admirably, our own case ; but we have-not, hitherto, cared to bestow even so little labor as Snyder has done, in raising from obscurity into notice, the actions of the man, who thinks his miserable pittance was the salvation of the paper he took, and that its withdrawal must necessarily put up our shutters. Like the editor of the Mail, we have “ successfully resisted ” iniquities, not in high places, but in some very low ones, and for our reward we have had instructions to “ stop my paper,” a relief from contagion we are thankful for. The parallel, however, ceases here, for we rejoice over, rather than regret, the severance of a connection which was well paid for on our part, while it lasted, aud which we cannot help feeling has done us more harm than good. The Mail goes into partial mourning (which the Standard does not do) over the sad event, and thus admonishes the offender: — My dear Mr Basley,—When you announced to me on Thursday, in terms of awful import and in words of terrible emphasis, that the Bank of New Zealand declined for the future to take the Coromandel Mail, I felt that the end of all things was nigh unto us, and that there was not to be any millenium, even so much as a very little bit indeed. I have been within gunshot of water spouts. I have beheld the lightning’s flash, and heard the roar of Heaven’s artillery, when a mighty storm was raging, and when I hadn’t had anything to eat for forty-eight hours. I have felt earthquakes, and have been in conflagration when crossing the raging main ; but neither the sensation of one or the other, of any or either, affected me as did that dread announcement made by you to me on Thursday last. I know that on the evening of that day, when I took my little granddaughter on ray knee and she said in infant lisping, “ God bless pa, and ma, and little brother ; and all people,” I told her to say, “ and God bless Mr Basley, and keep him from all harm, and make him an angel.” Having done all that may be expected from a Christian, I have now to ask are you justified in using your position in order to the commission of what must appear to most people a contemptible piece of petty spite -so petty, that only

the very smallest mind, dwarfed and narrowed down to the infinitesimal, could be capable of ? You, Sir, a few nights ago, wanted to crush the clergyman of the church of which you are a member. You, had you been allowed to have had your way, would have turned that aged minister out of house and home—would have sent him out to the cold mercies of the world—and 'or what! Because, as a Christian clergyman, in the conscientious performance of a sacred calling, he considered it his duty to gently admonish you from the pulpit. And because I with a few others resisted such au attempt, and resisted it successfully, you turn round, and, in the name of the Bank you represent, you stop the Coromandel Mail. Wliy, sir, those who know me know that I care nothing for such a matter ; not if you had the power, as no doubt you would have the will, to stop every paper issued in Coromandel, would I care one jot or tittle. I think, in the interests of the Corporation which you serve, and for which you are paid, it is my duty to lay before your employers a simple statement of a simple fact—that because I stepped in between you and an aged clergyman, whose days are drawing to their shortest span, and against whom no charge of immorality was preferred, you are of that “ small miserable construction ” that you have ordered the paper which your employers pay for to be stopped. Now my dear Sir, I do not intend the Mail shall be stopped by your order. It will be regularly delivered at your branch, and in due course the Bill will be forwarded to head quarters for payment with an accompanying explanation. And don’t you be trying any more of these like little games. —I am, Dear Mr Basley, Your most affectionately, The Editor.