The Press-gang.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 51, 20 December 1900, Page 19

The Press-gang.

From the first it was likewise evident that lo effort would be spared to make political capital out of the Stoke affair. ' The wave of public feeling,' says the N.Z. Times, * was industriously worked up for political and other reasons.' The Taieri Advocate and other papers also refer to l the political significance 1 of the Stoke cases. The Nelson Evening Mail — an Opposition paper — made itself throughout the sounding - board of the local fanatics. The chorus was taken up as if at the stroke of a conductor's baton by many other papers throughout the Colony. It was one of the most disgraceful prostitutions of the functions of the newspaper Press that has ever come under our notice. As the N.Z. Times points out, the Press, ' led away entirely by vain imaginings,' raised a ' hue and cry,' made • improper and indecent ' attempts, by ' comments ' and ' fussy insinuations concerning pending cases,' to prejudice them before the Court, and to interfere with ' fairplay aud decent legal administration.' Rabelais' witches concealed their eyes in their slippers when at home. They clapped them into their sockets when abroad, the better to spy out the faults and foibles of their neighbors. A large section of our Press played a part similar to that of Rabelais' withered and venemous hags. Only a little time ago they raged and raved and tore their hair and clawed like dancing dervishes because of a suspicion that ex-captain Dreyfus was not getting a fair trial in far-off France. At home in New Zealand their eyes were in their boot-heels. They did everything in their power to cloud the judicial issues of the Stoke affair with political passion and to substitute trial by popular clamor for whiit is deemed to be the palladium of British liberty, trial by jury.