The Fiji Times and the New Zealand Herald.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3708, 12 November 1880, Page 3

The Fiji Times and the New Zealand Herald.

The Fiji Times has a strong leader upon an article that appeared some time ago in the Herald upon Fijian affairs. The Times after accusing the New Zealand paper of using untruthful and vulgar language says :—

We offer not the slightest objection to the Herald making the very best of what Fiji has learnt to regard as a "Queen's bad bargain." As the system of elective Governors is yet an idea in embryo it would be folly to do otherwise. Further more, in consideration of the eminent services which New Zealand is about to render us in relieving us of the incubus we are disposed to endure more submissively than we otherwise might do, the impertinence of the Herald in its perhaps chivalrous, but intemperate attempt to help a particularly lame dog OTer a remarkably bigh stile. The Herald has undertaken a sufficiently difficult task in endeavoring to rehabilitate its idol and to present it in decent guise to the eyes of the New Zealand public. We have no wish to add to the difficulty, no wish that 11 the colopists of New Zealand should believe that they are about to receive the worst of Governors.", That is their affair and the? will discover all that is necessary in due course. But Sir Arthur's conduct

while he still holds the position of ruler OTer us is our affair, andas such we exercise k. the right to discuss it calmly and temperThat it is impossible to do so in complimentary phraseology is unfortunately a public calamity. In dealing with the truth we are compelled to use the plain language of truthfulness. A felicitous ambiguity of expression might without doubt be more palatable, but the victim stretched upon the rack cries out in his agony and pays but little attention to the harmonious modulation of the tones wrung by torture from the quivering frame. The absolute fact is, that the colonial press cannot, conceive the possibility of such a state of things aa here exist. They cannot believe that an English community, at their very doors, are the helpless, unregarded slaves of a despotism, in its nature almost as absolute and tyrannical as that which has given birth to the hideous Nihilism of Russia. Their own correspondents in vain assert the incredible and astounding fact. In the same issue of the Herald, which con* tains the article referred to, Mr Julian Thomas, writing from Fiji, after a tour through the islands, says, '* I but chronicle what I see and hear. ... Never have I seen such universal rejoicing at the prospect of getting rid of an obnoxious ruler. . . . Until one comes to Levuka it is impossible to conceive the abject subjection of the planters to the Governor. . . . The idea has been inculcated that they are a worthless set, of the beach-comber and convict type, instead of being as fine a set of gentlemen as any in the world. . . . The removal of the capital to Suva, whereby hundreds will be ruined and the fortune of one Melbourne firm made, is the last of the wrongs perpetrated upon the colony. . . . The discontent is so great, although smothered by fear, that in any other country I should expect to see open revolution and bloodshed." Still in the face of facts so vouched for, the Herald remains, or at least affects to remain, unconvinced. It calmly asserts that the discontent is confined to Levuka, that it would be unjust to the white residents to imagine that the Fiji Times . represents public opinion and that its own correspondent simply tells the tale "as it • • "i»as.toWio him, md wisely abstains from expressing an opinion, Oat* pitiful equivocation be pushed to a more contemptible extreme. ■' . . :