MR. BARNICOAT-MR. SAUNDERS. To the Editor of the Colonist.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 431, 10 December 1861, Page 2

MR. BARNICOAT-MR. SAUNDERS. To the Editor of the Colonist.

Sm—Several of Mr. Barnicoat's personal friends having requested me to state explicitly that in quoting the few verses from Cowper that appear to have so much annoyed that gentleman and some of his supporters, I had; no intention of insinuating that he was not an honest man, I have no hesitation in requesting you to publish a few lines, in which I will endeavor to make both the oversensitive and the over obtuse clearly understand what I do and what I do not mean; although before doing so I cannot resist the temptation T feel to quote another line or two from the same poet, who says that E'en the child who knows no better „; Than to interpret by the letter . The story of a cock and bull, Must have a most uncommon skull. Well, sir, I really did not accuse or mean to accuse Mr. Barnicoat of having* ever robbed an orchard, or taken an apple or a pear from any of his neighbor's; nor am I conscious of having said anything that would fairly bear the construction of depreciating iq the slightest degree Mr. Barnicoat's very blameless and estimable private character; although I did say that he was too honest for his company, and that by lending his respectable and respected character to a most unscrupulous and dishonest political party, he had given that party a position they would not otherwise have attained, and a position that had enabled them to inflict a greater amount of injury upon' the Nelson public than they could otherwise have' done, and had thus (however reluctantly) con- v tributed in no small degree to the success of the ! various jobberies that have been inflicted upon the public property of Nelson. It will be remembered that I was particularly, although by no means exclusively, alluding to Mr. Barnicoat's connection with the Governors and Trustees of the Nelson College, and I cannot perhaps make my meaning better understood in any other way than by pointing out what ppp'ears to me to be Mr. Barnicoat's position with reference to those governors, and I do so ths more readily as I believe I shall thereby only give a fair sample of Mr. Barnicoat's conduct wherever he has been unfortunately associated with the same party in the public affairs of this province. When Dr. Monro, with the assistance of Messrs. Travere and Co. (I don't include Mr. T.s partners in the brewery or the law), first contrived a system by which the voice of the Nelson public in the control of the College funds should be altogether ■ swamped by giving their votes to men of large property and none at all to men of small means, I know of no proof that Mr.. Barnicoat was even a consenting party to that first step in depriving the Nelson public of any beneficial participation in the large educational funds which had been set apart for the benefit of residents in the Nelson province, although he certainly immediately voted for the men who ao slyly prepared, pocketed, and passed the measure, and. shortly afterwards Mr. Barnicoat be- i came himself a Trustee. When some hardened, and shameless Trustee first proposed that the Trustees •who had been elected by these property votes should render themselves independent •of any further votes whatever, by appointing themselves governors of ths College and handing the funds over ,to themselves, I have no doubt Mr. Barnicoat first blushed, then laughed, gave his brother Trustees a few dry hints for their unparalleled effiontry, but ultimately consented to go the whole hog with the rest—to elect and be elected. This is the first instance in which" we are able to see so.far into the unseen, unheard,*, unchallenged, and unpublished proceedings of the. * ' Trustees,' as to know that Mr. Barnicoat miist s have been not a mere passive but also an active participator in this arrangement to deprive the^ pedpleof this province of the mere, vestige of a ; right that the former trick of .this party had left them. And havirig''thus committed himself-—.'. , having thus entered the 'orchard•—Mr. Barnicbat was powerless for any further opposition to the designs which his comrades had upon the College funds, however much' lie-might, wish to offer it. Mr. Barnicoat no. doubt Btiw\a9 [clearly as every. ■ one else did that the Cojlege was so managed that , the town only received any benefit from the funds '. which belonged to the whole province, but the ;.. governors, were nearly all, residents in the town and there could now be no appeal against them. Mr. Barnicoat no doubt saw that the funds were sufficient to establish at least six first-class schools in different parts of the province in which quite as much should be taught as was ever yet taught in the one Nelson school; say two in town, one for girls and one for boys, or if you please one for young ladies and one for young gentlemen ; one in the Waimea, one at Motueka, one at the Wairau, and one at any part of Golden Bay in which the population may show some symptoms of permanently settling. The funds were sufficient to have built these schools years ago, and to have endowed them each with j>soo a year, which with the children's fees would have been quite sufficient to have, secured the services of amply competent and good hard-working teachers; —but no, this would have benefited the people of this province as a whole, and not merely a favoured few-—this would have educated other children besides the 'governors" and their friends—and would besides have admitted too many common persons' children amongst them—and therefore these self-elected governors resolve to waste half the money at their disposal in a uselessly large wooden' (much of it a' white pine) building and' to spend the remainder in getting out and giving a salary to, their own friends and schoolfellows, employing a few foot-man-like officials, and paying themselves a pound a day for their arduous attention to the welfare of that public for whose benefit they undertook to administer the Nelson Trust Funds. . Te all this Mr. Barnicoat appears before the public as a consenting and accessory party, and his name is used to give' a sanction to all these proceedings, and if this were the only instance in ~ which Mr. Barnicoat had yielded his conscience and better judgment to such unworthy friends, I think it would have quite justified me in comparing him te the 'youngster at school' who said that Since they will take them, 1 think I'll go too. The list verse of the poem->- . (He shared in the plunder, but pitied the man, &c.) part of which has, I am told;' been made the foundation of an attack upon me in a paper as: remarkable for its inaccuracy as it is for its venom whenever it condescends to m»ke me the subject of a leading article, was not quoted by me at all, as I did not consider it appropriate. And, by the bye, I hope/the Examuier will not devote so'much attention to me just now as to omit or diminish its usual measure of abuse upon Mr. Robinson; for although Mr Robinson will no doubtjget m, whether that paper abuses him or not, he has always owed much of his popularity to the ill-feeling which those whoimust naturally hate an honest public man have always exhibited towards him. I have said at the commencement of this letter that Mr. Barnicoat's conduct with the Nelson Trurt funds was only a fair sample of his conduct in other public affairs lohenever he_ has teen associated with the same party. x l wish to lay particular stress on these latter words, as whenever Mr. Barnicoat has been called on to act in public apart • from that baneful association his conduct has been everything that the public could desire. As a; member of the Waimea Road Board, he has well earned the gratitude of all his constituents, and the same may be said on the Local Educational Committee, except where the conduct of the Inspector. (one of the Governors) has been concerned. Mr. Elliott let the real secret out at the nomination, when he said that Mr. Barnicoat was not just the sort of man he should have liked, but he would 'surround himself with good advisers.' Now what Mr. Elliott calls ' good advisers' the public of Nelson, slowly taught by dearly bought experience, will justly call bad advisers. They know that what is Mr. Elliott's meat is their. poison: they will therefore reverse the tale, and say that Mr. Barnicoat himself is almost every thing they could wish, but his advisers men whom, they have trusted but never will trust again. t Yours, &c., ALFRED SAUNDERS.

■" - To the Editor of the Colonist. Sin—There are.many ways of tolling a story so as to heighten or diminish the merit of a man. The story of Nelson's coat is an illustration of the first, aud the greater Btory of the insulted Mr. Barnicoat and insulting Mr. Saunders of the second. First of the first, Nelson is reported to have silenced the affectionate importunity of his officers entreating him'to conceal Ihe stars on his breast by saying, 'In honor I gained them, and in honor I will die with them' But Dr. Arnold heard the facts from Sir Thomas Hardy. Nelson wore on the day of the battle the same coat which he had worn for weeks, having the Order of the Bath embroidered upon it; nnd ■when his friend expressed some apprehension of the badge, he answered him that he was aware of the danger, but that it was ' too late then to shitt a coat.' The'readers of the Examiner who were not spectators of the ' scene' (which was not seen) at the nomination day would imagine that Mr. Barnicoat had been grievously misused, when in fact he laughed himself as everybody else did at the playful allusion to the orchard robbery which was introduced with great good humor by Mr. Saunders, and the most obiectionable passage omitted as all men of taste who j were present could tell by the halting of the rhyme. Why is this deliberate perversion made ? Is the Examiner so hard up for a lament that they must seize upon an episode of the day because they cannot attack principles? There is no "getting through life without a grievance with some people. Sickness, poverty, disappointment or wounded pride, if borne, must be complained of by weak minds and thrust upon the tried and unwilling listener. If such a malady is common no wondzr that the Examiner is afflicted as its rasping tone of reproach evinces, for in physics as in morals, the weakest generally catcha bad complaint first, hence the Robinson-phobia, which is so virulent and' linmistakeable in the leaders of that highly respectable elderly lady.. It may be excellent to quote the sensible words of the Earl of Warwick, but why not continue in the same strain, instead of proceeding to compare the countenances of men at the Provincial Hall to those Been at a brutal fight. If these are the men that are invited to fraternise with others of more exalted views and sink political differences ' You rub the sore When you should bring the plaster.' So different'is the key-note of the Earl of Warwick to the low tune that follows, that it is generous to presume that the editor had nothing to do in setting such discords together. That the eubscribers to the Examiner may not be misrepresented, it is highly necessary that Mr. .Elliott should state his. own views, prejudices and rancour in the first person.singular, so that the public may see vhat they now understand there is, a personal matter between. Miv Elliott and Mr J. P. Robinson. I never could see why Mr. E. should ao studiously and unscrupulously depreciate Mr. Robinson; any man who picked up his knowledge with h:s types should display more humility, and not talk with the air of a professor when it ia known that his nights on the ladder of learning have been confined to the lower rounds. This literary vaporing only evinces that there is in man a subordinate part to good sense, action, and feeling, and that is the power of misrepresenting all three, viz., bosh. When Publius Sextiua chose to say everything himself, and would let nobody else apeak, and^ while the judices were giving their votes, Cicero said, ' Make the most of your' opportunity to-day, for to-morrow you will be a mere nobody.' ' Yours, &ov, A SCHOOLMASTER. December 6, 1861. " WHOSOEVER—WHOMSOEVER." To the Editor of the Colonist. Sin. —I have just read Ignoramus's letter, copied into your journal from the Otago Colonist. I am not surprised at the blunder he makes (two boys in my class made the same) in supposing that * Whosoever' should be in the objective case. But I am surprised that lie should append the letters Q..E.D. (which master tells me means ' Quod erat demonstrandum,' whic'i was to be shown) to his very bungling attempt to prove that an objective case can stand in'place of a nominative to a verb. Now the only thing which Ignoramus appears to me to show, ie, that he has fairly earned, and is fully entitled to, the sunriquet he has assumed. If the Q.E.D.Were placed after his cognomen, as doubtless ought to be, it, might cause us to vender why a man should be anxious to demonstrate so cleavly that he is an ignoramus;' but as his. communication throughout demonstrates little else, we can only conclude that he has some private motive of his own for so doing, and that | the Q, E.D. is misplaced from inadvertency. Ignoramus seems to be scarcely aware of the difference between the compound relative ' whosoever;' and the simple relative ' who:' whosoever ' embodies a personal and a relative pronoun in itself, and is equal to he who, or the person that; j and Ignoramus falls into the error of supposing tha| i' ought to be in the objective case after the preposition/or, whereas, the noun person is the the'objective after the prepositionfor; person is the antecedent to the relative whosoever, and the relative agrees with its antecedent in gender, number, and person, but not in case, although it may chance sometimes to be in the same case.

In the present instance I have shown in my former letter, that whosoever is the nominative to the verb is. understood. If it be put in the objective, the sentence must stand thus, ' It shall be lawful for any person, he whom is with or without a warrant,' &c., which is as bad a, phrase as * Alfred than whom no better king ever reigned,' which is most decidedly ungrammatical, for whom should be who, because it is the nominative to the verb was understood.

As Ignoramus refers to rules, though he so grossly misapplies them, I would call his attention to that one which states that ' the preposition must be placed immediately. before the relative which it governs.' The preposition for, is here placed bpfore the noun person, and not before the relative whosoever.-

I am afraid that the impenetrability, with which Ignoramus informs us his little caput was afflicted, must have extended to that part of his person in which he would fain have us believe he is peculiarly sensitive; and that only a few of Mr. Murray's rules were scored sufficiently deep upon it, to find their-way- into his other extremity. Yours, &c, ;T A Boy at ' App&eby School.

Appleby, December 4th, 1861