CORRESPONDENCE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1089, 20 June 1882, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

[We do not hold ourselves responsible for opinions expressed by our correspondents.'} FROM GISBORNE TO MELBOURNE. TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —I trust, as correspondent of your paper, and writer of the letters thereto, bearing the above title, that you will allow me space to remark on your sub-leader of the 9th May last, in which you profess to explain away the part your staff had in the publication of a paragraph in one of those letters, which you term as “ unfair and objectionable ” to Capt. Kennedy and Capt. Chatfield. On that explanation, such as it is, you have built up a kind of one-sided apology, and have, somewhat impotently, I think, endeavored to excuse yourself at my expense. You must pardon me if I demur to this. Of course you have a perfect right to excise from correspondence to your columns, anything you may deem “ unjust and uncalled for,” and to raise, into a construct ive reading, words and sentences, which bear the stamp of libel. That this preliminary course was not followed in the present instance, is a fault for which you are accountable, not I. Indeed you state in your remarks that it is nothing"but the “ carelessness ”of the editor that caused the “ objectionable ” paragraph to remain. With this I am, and I dare say your readers are, quite satisfied ; but I think you step a little beyond what is fair, and a great deal beyond what is true, in basing the necessity for your apology, not on any actual or implied wrong done by me to Messrs Kennedy and Chatfield, but upon an implied stigma cast on me by yourself. First, that in writing of those gentlemen I was actuated by feelings of “ ill-feeling or spite,” and that the subjectmatter of my letter, in regard to them was a “ nasty matter 1” It is not my intention to argue the point of libel, but I decidedly disclaim writing in the strain, or with the “coloring,” to which you allude. You justify your criticism on the acts of a public servant, “ on the grounds of the necessity of ventilation of public questions,” while quite careless of private opinion.” I have taken the same high ground, but you deny me the vantage, and attribute motives which yon cannot substantiate. So far as my remarks on the masters of the Hawea and Ringarooma are concerned, I do not wish to repeat the original offence if you think them “ undeserved and uncalled for but I can assure you that several fellow passengers with me, complained both loud and deep of the loose management, and sometimes inconsiderate conduct they generally met with on board the Union boats, and they (not knowing my intention of writing) said any one who would expose the matter, would be a public benefactor, and entitled to the thanks of the travelling community. I took several notes of the times and circumstances to which our conversations referred, and* I had intended, so soon as my journey to Melbourne had finished, to give a general epitome of what are held to be the short-comings of the Union Company, in their relations with the public, but as my time, it appears, would bo thrown away, I shall no do so. And now a word, with your indulgence, on the question of libel. One of the Melbourne papers recently was threatened, similarly to what I infer tho Standard has been. The editor, feeling that an apology was called for, made one like a man, but he did not cast tho blame on his correspondent undiscovered to the general reader. The threatener of the action stated that the writing of which he complained, had done him a “ special damage,” for which nothing short of £lOOO hard cash would atone. A writ was issued against tho journal, and was pleaded to, when a modest intimation was made that half the sum would sat isfy tho plaintiff’s wounded feelings. Nothing daunted the defendant paid one pound sterling into Court, which was ultimately accepted us satisfaction in fall for special damages originally estimated at a thousand pounds in value. Other actions may end the same way.— Yuurs, &c., The Writer of “From Gisborne to Melbourne.” [We have nothing to say in reference to the foregoing, except that in placing such construction on the motives of tho writer we were only guided by what was actually laying before us. We are glad to receive the disclaimer. -Ed. P. 8.5.)