LESE MAJESTE.

Te Aroha News, Volume XIV, Issue 2066, 8 January 1898, Page 2

LESE MAJESTE.

A collection of the unpublished sayings of certain members of the Domain Board would add to the gaiety of pressmen, if not of nations. We feel inclined to bracket the Chairman with the Emperor of Germany in his intolerance of press criticism. According to a report which has reached us from a reliable source, a hireling attached to this journal, too lazy to travel to Waiorongomai for news, bailed the Chairman of the Domain Board up in the street and wanted to know how things were going in that blooming suburb. Instead of going out to Waiorongomai the hireling in question, the Grand Panjandrum alleges, spends his time picking h)les in the administration of the Board. Fortunately ours is but an obscure country paper otherwise we might share the fate of the editor of the German Kladderdatsch and find ourselves arraigned for high treason, inasmuch as we so far forgot ourselves as to suggest, a day or two ago, in an elegantly conceived local paragraph that a certain fence would be none the worse for a coat of paint Our critic did not stop at this, but went on ‘in King Cambyses vein,’to say t ‘ I could speak more freely but for thefact that there are twopress men present, who are not always to be relied on to give a proper view of matters.’ If we are to take Mr Gavin seriously he would be in favour then of gagging the press .- of instituting a censorship in New Zealand - or it may be excluding reporters from Town Board and similar meetings, altogether. If we are to take Mr Gavin seriously ho would be in favour of introducing into New Zealand, Tammany Hall methods of municipal government and only allow reports of such transactions to appear in the columns of the press as it was deemed expedient that the public should become acquainted with ' r lest the press, and through it, the public, should take an improper view of matters, to use his own words. But we know Mr Gavin too well to entertain such an outrageous notion, and counselled our reporter to treat the episode as we did that in which we figured-—as a jest.