THE COLONIST. NELSON, TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 1860.

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 262, 24 April 1860, Page 2

THE COLONIST. NELSON, TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 1860.

We have often read, and perhaps we have too often reprinted for the edification of our readers, a list of the numerous difficulties which beset the path of a publisher of a newspaper; but in addition to the ordinary ills that belong to our vocation, we have, during the last three months, been subjected to an annoyance of rather a special character. j Ever since the day that the general apathy of our fellow-settlers was for a short time disturbed and their confidence in British justice received a severe shock by the trial of Mr. Saunders, we have received a regular stream of communications from correspondents on that subject. Many of these we have declined, and have thereby given great offence to our correspondents and subscribers. A k\v of the mildest of them we have published; but even with these, we have been either threatened or furnished with legal proceedings by Mr. Travers.

At first we treated Mr. Travers's applications as Lord Chesterfield is said to have treated the clown who stood in his path, and roared out, " I never gives the wall to scoundrels ! " We were indeed so excessively polite, that we apologised to him for the publication of letters in which his 'name was never mentioned, and upon which he had chosen to put a construction different to that put upon them by the writer, by ourselves, or by any of our readers except Mr. Travers. But, like the Maories, Mr. Travers could not appreciate our politeness, and no doubt attributed it to that terror of law with which he fancies I that his late success has stricken all the inhabitants of this province; and our readers will at least be interested to know that Mr. Travers is again to figure as a prosecutor, and we suppose as an Amiens Curim, at the next sitting of the Supreme Court.

In the reign of George the Third an application was made to the Court of King's Bench for a criminal information against the printer of a newspaper, who had published the following sentence: — "The printers are much perplexed about the likeness tff the devil. To obviate this difficulty concerning his infernal majesty, Peter Pindar has recommended Ao his friend Opia the countenance of Lord Lonsdale."

Brskine appeared for the defence, and said:—" My Lords, without any disrespect to the noble prosecutor, I must be allowed to say that the paragraph is not a libel on him, but on the devil." And we cannot help thinking that our learned prosecutor has, in his present choice of a subject for action against us, fallen into a similar mistake. One of our correspondents (A B C) speaks about Mr. Saunders telling the truth about " the great men of Nelson; " and Mr. Travers, with characteristic modesty, professes to think -thftt herAustbe

included in that list. We do not for a moment believe that our correspondent had the least intention of setting Mr. Travers up as one of " the great men of Nelson ;" but if he had, surely " the great men," and not Mr. Travers, ought to have complained of a libel, and ought to have convraenced an action against us for publishing the letter. ; I:

Even Mr. Travers himself does*not always appear to have the same confidence in his. own posi.tipnj as.when, in ~o*ur.4ast summary for the European mail, we spoke of appointments being given as the price of " political profligacy,'*" we are again served with a writ, not from the General Government, whose conduct we were criticising, but from Mr. Travers, who appears to think that we can have meant no one but hi nself. ' /.

Under these circumstances, we,-,mulst request our correspondents, if they Msh their letters to be published, to change their tack, and to write in such a manner as will be quite agreeable to Mr. Travers's highly sensitive feelings. They must, in fact, sing his praise and glory: let us hear a little about his consistency, his magnanimity and forbearance, his equity, his punctuality, his veracity, or any othor of his numerous virtues; but we must not have a single word about little dirty pieces of paper, or horsewhips, about land which he has not found out, or reports about the Maories, which were not told him by a gentleman from Hoke Poke. . ' We shall be happy to publish any criticisms upon the public conduct of any other public officer, and still more happy to publish any justification of their conduct which may be furnished by themselves or: their friends. But Mr. Travers must be an exception to the general rule of all British public officers in the nineteenth century, we must treat him as we used to treat a great meanspirited schoolfellow, who, whenever he got a thrashing from a smaller boy than himself, used to go whining to the schoolmaster for revenge. For, although, as Sam Weller told Mr. Pickwick, battledore and shuttlecock is a very good game, it is rather too expensive when two lawyers play on one side, and a humble individual who is not a lawyer on the other.

Each of the offences we have mentioned is estimated to have damaged his character to the extent of One Thousand Pounds; and by the same scale of calculation, this article damage it at least two thousand more, making four thousand pounds altogether.

Now, instead of paying for Mr. Travers's character piecemeal in this way, we should prefer to compromise the mafter. Let his character be valued as a whole by two or three impartial 'appraisers; and then wo feel confident we should have no difficulty in paying him for its total value.