Poverty Bay Standard. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. TUESDAY, AUGUST 1, 1882.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1111, 1 August 1882, Page 2

Poverty Bay Standard. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. TUESDAY, AUGUST 1, 1882.

In calling the attention of the public generally, and our Borough Councillors especially, to the motion by Councillor Tucker which is to be brought forward to-night for discussion, we feel bound to give utterance to strong and indignant protest against such absolute prostitution of the Council’s right and their time and influence. We distinctly say that this matter does not concern the Borough Council in any one way. The Government have acted perfectly openly and fairly in the matter, and, if the Council endeavor to pass censure upon them, they exceed not only their duty, but their power, and expose themselves to ridicule and contempt, thereby jeopardising their value as a body, a value which is not their own property but the property of the ratepayers who elected them, and which they have no earthly right to peril. We warn the Council in emphatic terms not to be made the tools of Councillor Tucker and Mr De Lautour in this matter. If those gentlemen are interested in the matter let them use fair and legitimate means of righting their grievance. That course is plainly open to them, and no Government can or will interfere with them. Let them swear an information and obtain a warrant for the arrest of the person whose conduct they so strongly deprecate. No one will interfere with them in pursuit of such a line, but to adopt the cowardly plan of sheltering themselves under the wing of a public body whose feeling in the matter they have made a deliberate attempt to bias, and against whom would exist no substantial remedy, is simply mean and paltry. What they seek to do let them do openly and boldly, not hiding in corners and making surreptitious stabs at the object of their dislike and persecution. But if we speak thus of their conduct what shall we say of a body of sensible men, representing a Borough in Council, who shall allow themselves to bo hood*winked into backing up an argument which they personally would be ashamed to use. We have little patience with such endeavors to prostitute the sense of the Council, if the law has been broken, the law is powerful enough .to assert itself by the proper course of justice without the veto or sanction of the Borough Council. Councillor Tucker and Mr De Lautour, in seeking such sanction are seeking to father upon the Council the onus of a prosecution, or rather persecution, which they dare not proceed with openly and in a legitimate form. They seek to make a catspaw of the Council for their own private ends.