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Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 433, 17 December 1861, Page 3

Sir—Although a miller proposed and a doctor seconded Mr. Robinson, at the late nomination, the miller appears to have administered by far the strongest physic—a physic which if it has not entirely cured the " Robinson-phobia" under which your contemporary has labored for tho last five years, has evidently changed the type of the disease, and converted it into a Saunders-phobia.

In one of your late leading articles, you tell us that you should want some better authority than that of the Nelson Examiner before you should believe that certain strangers to Nelson, who were said to have been present at the nomination, left the Hall in disgust; but I cannot say that 1 feel any difficulty in believing that much of the Editor's assertion, and only differ with him as to the source from which the disgust originated.

Those who had no doubt been informed that Mr. Barnicoat was to be brought forward as the representative of the " intelligent, educated, select, and respectable class" in Nelson, would naturally feel somewhat astonished.at the ungramatical egotistical rigmarole of his proposer, the self contradicted assertions and counter assertions of his seconder, and at the humiliating claptrap, alias bunkum, of Mr. Barnicoat himself; and any person who was present at the nomination, and had a pair of good eyes, I don't mean good enough to see Sir. Barnicoat's " flashing eye,1' or Mr. Sttiinders' " blush of shame," but a pair of good common eyes, must have noticed that the audience did not grow thinner, or the tide of human heads set outwards from the hall, whilst Mr. Saundeis was speaking, but whilst a certain gentleman was declaring his determination to speak whether any one would listen to him or not.

There can be little use in trying to argue with a person so much out of temper as the Editor of the Examiner evidently is just now; but I may be allowed to suggest to that great unknown who undertakes to abuse the Nelson public in general, and their leading men in particular, that a little more argument and a great deal less abuse, would be much more likely to accomplish the object that is evidently so near his heart, that of removing Mr. J. P. Robinson from a position in which he has no doubt proved a " great obstruction." to many well laid designs. Instead of abusing us for our blood-thirsty and prize-ring propensities in listening to Mr. Saunders' speech, and Mr. Saunders for making it, why docs he not show what part of that speech was abusive, and what part of it was, untrue ? We know that Mr. Saunders was once told, that if over he said any thing more about that Waiinea West road he should be called " sneaking, cowardly, and disingeneous;" but Ido not Hiippose that even the Editor of the Examiner ever thought that such an elegantly expressed but impotent threat, even from such a great personage as the Speaker of the House of Representatives would entirely prevent Mr. Saunders alluding to that or other similar affairs, at such an appropriate time and place as the nomination of a. Superintendent, whoso greatest recoimnendmion was that ha would pi'QYQUt the public;

iioni fmther injury by' such injurious appropim-

tions. . When the Editor of the Examiner can show v? that Mr. Saunders has attacked Mr. Ikrniooat's public and private character, with the same animosity and bitterness, with tlu same want of candour and truth, as that of Mr. Robinson has bewiso Ion:;' and so often attacked by the Kditor and correspondents of the Nelson Examiner, he uiay depend upon it the public of Nelson will soon exhibit a sufficient amount of good taste and feeling to listen to Mr. Saunders with the same impatience and distrust as that with which they have lately listened to Mr. Charles Elliott.

1 am, &c, A LISTENER IN THE HALL.

To His Honor the Superintendent. Per favor of the Colonist.

Sir—l have taken the liberty of thus publicly addressing you on a subject of great importance to this province and this district in particular. Wo have six gentlemen placed on the commission of the peace for the district of Motueka who have made arrangements to hold a couit on the first Saturday in the month to settle the awgrievances and disputes that unfortunately will sometimes arise in the best regulated communities. Now, sir, it is supposed that in the selection of persons for these important duties that men of education, experience and integrity would be chosen ;— gentlemen whose ideas should be sufficiently enlarged to know the nature of tho.se English laws'and colonial ordinances that are applicable to our circumstances, that decisions should be given expeditiously, and with strict iinpaitiality:—how very far short of these desirable objects being obtained, we have sad and lamentable complaints in Motueka. Summonses have been issued that boys in our Government Schools would laugh at, and through the non-attendance of the magistrates no court has been he'd for months together. A number of persons were summoned in October last, but there was no court held. In November the court was opened and cases that should have been heard in the previous month, were called for and adjudicated upon in the absence of some of the parties without any fresh -summonses' being issued. On Saturday last, December 7, a number of persons attended at the court-house. Mitie of whom had to travel miles, at much inconvenience, and, to them, a great pecuniary loss, but when they arrived found there was no court.

Such are the evils we have had to endure for some years past by having those appointed to administer the laws who have shown their unfitness, and deficiency in every requisite that appertains to such a responsible situation.

To you, sir, should you he re-elected, and of that there is little doubt, tho inhabitants will look up and expect a determined effort to be made on your p.ut hy representations to the proper quarter, to have such a crying evil remedied.

Yours, &c,

LOOKER-ON.

Motueka, 9th December, 1851

To the Editor of the Colonist,

Zir—l wont you to tull our noibor Barnekefc jist one theng. Whon lie da kail we varmers awoy vrom our hoy to goo and hear whar we'el ha he vat Zuperintendent, I wish he'd jist tak aboot whit he be gwon to do iv we da pot un in, and not mak a vool on us al be takin al the time aboot the chap what da giind our whate.

Yr umble Zarvant, A WYMEAR VARMER,

THE 'QUIDNUNCS,' 'INQUIRERS,' Ac—No. I,

lo the Editor of the Colonist.

Sic—Some Examiners have just been handed to me by • mine host,' for my amusement. In them I find two or three letters, a species of three-fold impersonation, laboriously ' got up,' to damage our good Superintendent. As it v ill be lightsome recreation to my fingers, I shall notice and try to answer these hydra-looking performances.

Allow me to say, if there be any solace or encouragement in such a pastime, it will be slightly tempered by the consideration, that it will be difficult to scribble more wretched trash than these attempts to blunder into publicity. At once formal, serious, and ludicrous, they puzzle by their obscurity of heavy wit, and tickle lefleetion until her tear for the correspondent's unconcealed degradation and offended consequence is startled by a smile, and at times a hearty laugh.

The dead papers of these epistolary curiosities are quite embalmed by their unwonted correspondence. It would not be marvelloin if they were even to be kept above ground, if not over odious in the corning hot political weather ; but it is to be hoped, on sanitary considerations particularly, that no infatuated tory will stir up cemeteries nnd other genteel abufe^. and call the smell ' Executive neglects.' Common sense, ifc may be, will suggest the decency and expediency of getting rid of the pest of unburied party faults before the day of polling. Meanwhile I shall divert the moments by a schoolboy's quotation and the thoughts it may cnll out ' to play while the moon does shine as bright as day.'

' Non ego te vidi Damonis, pessime, caprem excissere insidiius?'—Virg. Buc. Eel. 111. 17, 18. Did 1 not see thee, miscreant silly, From Damon's flock steal out a billy ?

Now, sir, there ia a nut-shell .if wisdom in this learned extract; yes, and a sound kernel of allegorical meaning. Formerly many of the profounder scholars were of opinion that the Bucolics of Virgil, replete with jarch Budibrastic allusions, are to be regarded as pastoral truly, but not the less political or literary in their application, because they chime.in soft measures to celebrate rams, lambs, and kids. The prince ofltalian bards, they supposed, had scores of covert references in his lays—the newspaper representatives of antiquity—to the great of the Roman world and his bardic compeers. He only attires them in Arcadian character for a little pleasantry. To this notion, however, the critics of this grosser and more literal age very generally object. Whether their superficial attainments be equal to the task of deciding, is a circumstance to hint a doubt. Certainly the ancient idea is productive of agreeable whim and attractive humor. Probably literary plagiaries, who often steal masculine ideas from a choice flock of words, may be thus pleasantly chicled in emblematic language. And 1 do not see why ambitious public men, who are ever prone to filch the honors due to others, may not be permanently rebuked in this mode, with most apposite effect, in passages resembling the one quoted. Nor is it too long a stretch of fancy to suppose, that when a meritorious act has been done, for the well being ot a province, for instance, by a union of several persons equally gifted and jealous,—if owe of the party, in the trim guise of a representative—of himself—should ra» venously snatch at all the solid advantages and also the moonshine of the glory,—some faithful watcher, protesting agtinst the unfairness, should rouse the drowsy shepherds. But if instead of a petty goat or sheep, a robbery should extend, by consummate artifice to a whole district, a range of compensatory hills or any other cheating fiction ; why then the alarum might becomfe altogether uprorious ' Multum latrante Ljscisoa.1 Yes, doubtless, in such a ease, as even now in Nelson, the honest barking of a guarding Lyseisca will not be that of disapprobation on the one side simply; we may presume the noise will provoke defiant opposition by the trained instinct of some poaching spaniel, aided possibly by the long howl of a pastoral mongrel. I will resume the subject in your next issue. Yours, (fee, QUID RIDES. Wakefield, 2nd Dec, 1861.