THE CASE OF MR DAVID MOSS.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 228, 24 January 1885, Page 3

THE CASE OF MR DAVID MOSS.

I received a polite call from Mr David Moss, of the Equitable Life Insurance Company, the other day, who was anxious to fill up a hiatus in the report of the charge of obtaining money by false pretences preferred against him by Mr H. J. Dean, at Launcoston, a little more than a year ago. The paragraph from the .Lmniccston Examiner sent me left the case incomplete, and merely stated that Mr Moss had been remanded on bail. He now informs mo that at the adjourned hearing the charge was dismissed, and that the magistrate considered the accuser had no grounds for it. Subsequently Mr Moss took civil proceedings against Dean, laying damages at £5,000, but the suit was withdrawn in consideration of an ample apology being 1 given by the defendant. It would therefore appear that the person, whoever ho may be, who sent the ex parte report in the Launcexkm Examiner, and designedly kept back the resmt of the case, was actuated by motives of petty and personal malevolence against Mr Moss, for reasons which are best known to himself, and desired to give him a stab in the dark. To persons of this stamp it is as well to make the fact clearly and unmistakably understood that the Observer is not intended to bo a vehicle for the gratification of personal malice and private grudges, and that those who attempt to make me a tool for that purpose do so at their own risk. Though I shall always endeavour to adhere to that journalistic etiquette which renders the identity of a hona fide contributor or informant sacred, and throws the veil of anonymity over his name, I shall never have the slightest compunction in handing over to persons who nave been basely, falsely, and maliciously attacked, the name of their assailant and the proof?. The anonymity of journalism is not intended as a hedge from which the shafts of cowardly malevolence may be thrown, but as a protection for persons whose position in society or the circumstances of the case, delicacy, or some other sufficient cause, renders it undesirable that their names should not be divulged.