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Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 496, 27 April 1869, Page 3

{To the Editor of the Westport Times.)

Sir, —In your issue of last Saturday appeared a letter from an individual in this town containing a parade of his private affairs, and also some covert allusions and insinuations pointed at me. Tour journal has thereby been made the medium for the promulgation of that which, did it emanate from another source, might be construed as affecting my character. There are persons in this world whose amity brands with indelible disgrace—whose praise is censure and whose censure praise—and I am happy to find that those who profess enmity to me are of that class.

Fourteen years -which I have spent in these colonies have established my character. Nothing can alter that save my own action. On Ballarat my business was such as to induce an unusually large circle of friends and acquaintances. I have with pleasure met hundreds of them upon this coast, and I am proud to say that every day proves to me that I still retain their regard and goodwill. On Ballarat I also sustained ruinous losses from fire (/was uninsured), but the devouring element which consumed my substance never cast its lurid glare upon that which I value more.

I may be allowed to remark that I would not have troubled you upon this occasion, any further than I have done previously upon the appearance in your paper of stealthy allusions meant to injure or annoy me. But I desire, once for all, to say that I look upon such anonymous or covert offsprings of cowardly malice as unworthy of place in a respectable journal, which they disgrace. Their appearance should be marked with contempt. They can but raise feelings of disgust in a well-regulated mind. They must rouse the abhorrence of any who cherish a manly spirit or an honest heart.

lam now the subject, but is there one amongst us who is safe from this sly and dastardly means of attack ? I say, no! unless his influence extends to the medium of publicity. In that case the poison dies in the waste-basket. It is well-known that I have had several disagreements with the representative of your paper and his friends. On my part it has always been open, and for an assigned cause. Is this a retaliation ? In charity, I hope not. — I have the honor to be, Sir, Yours &c, E. J. O'Coxob. Late Coach Proprietor, Ballarat. Westport, April 26. [lt was an omission that the letter upon which Mr O' Conor gratuitously founds so many ridiculous hypotheses did not appear as an advertisement.]