Untitled

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 257, 11 May 1866, Page 2

We must decline to publish " Observers V' lettef- in its present shape, inasmuch as it is^tinged with the spirit which appears to /actuate our contemporary in his comments upon public affairs. A gentlemanly and argumentive newspaper discussion, is not only interesting but instructive, but the moment it becomes one of personal recrimination and abuse it degrades the community, and is prejudicial to the best interests of the Province. We cannot adopt the principle that you " must fight a man with his own weapons." If a writer chooses to abandon argument, and wildly adopt a systematic stylo of picking out an individual and assuming that he was the writer of this or that article, and making that an excuse for covering him with abuse, and ufeing low epithets, he ceases to be worthy of notice. Our contemporary has outraged all the amenities of journalism. He has forfeited all right to be held as a legitimate member of the "Priesthood of Letters " and in so declining to degrade ourselves hy, carrying on a discussion with a writer who for the want of argument descends to the clap-trap Satrist style of language which our contemporary has adopted, we feel that in justice to those he has sought

to injure, it is a duty to emphatically declare that the writer of the ietter which appeared 'in this journal, signed an " Observer," was not a G-overnment 'official ; that no one connected with the G-overn-ment, the Provincial Council, or any " party" in Southland wrote or dictated a single line of that communication. The vyiter is a gentleman well known to us, and one whose opinion in another part of the colony may influence the destiny cf Southland more beneficially than 'our contemporary imagines, or could ever dream 0f... As to ourselves we shall say nothing more than, that; we shall pursue, the even tenor of our way— uninfluenced by Government or party, supporting all movements we believe beneficial to the Province, and condemning all we deem detrimental. "With our contemporary we have done — "you cannot touch the un- v clean without being defiled." .