The Freedom of the Press.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 962, 20 July 1881, Page 2

The Freedom of the Press.

When Mr Wickham was acquitted on the charge of libel preferred against him by Mr. Rees, the Auckland Observer congratulated him in the name, of the liberty of the press. The Observer evidently has no fear of the Supreme Court before its eyes ; while the recent judgment will add contempt for its power. The following are excerpta showing the Observer s opinion of what it calls the “ liberty of the press ” : — Iscariot the Second. , The iniquitous, hypocritical, and mendicant knave who presides over the literary abortion that emanates every Friday from a printer’s den in High-street, has been trying this last week or two to raise a few coppers and replenish his fast emptying pockets by deliberate and systematic lying about the proprietor of the Observer. He is an “ unhappy wretch.” A “ flabbly failure,” living on the “ energy and industry of his wife although “ personally the abuse and low Billingsgate “of this foul-mouthed successor to Ananias “ and Judas Iscariot affects us not at all.” Still, “it is annoying, of course, to have a “ beast of a fellow chucking verbal slime, and “ literary offal at us.” The Observer “ lays “ no claim to be high-principled or religious,” therefore, it despises one whom it looks upon as “ a ghastly fraud, who, utterly lost to “ honor, decency, and shame, has, at length, “ cast off his ill-fitting sheep’s clothes, and “ deliberately become a professional liar and “ slanderer.” We fancy the foregoing morceaux ought to satisfy the most ardent supporter of what is “ fair and reasonable,” in the writing of public journals. But it is instructive to find that in advertising for a correspondent at the Thames, it says:—“We can’t have “ the Observer made a vehicle for ill- “ natured remarks or privrte spleen. “ Public men are of course fair game, “ but not the private affairs of ladies “ and families.”