Anonymous Letters

New Zealand Tablet, 11 October 1906, Page 22

Anonymous Letters

Some time at Palmerston (in June of the present year) Major Keddell, S.M., scored up the word 1 coward ' against the ill-conditioned varlets who had sent anonymous letters to the Waikouaiti Licensing Committee. The same subject— anonymous accusations— cropped up in the House of Representatives on last Friday.- It brought the Premier to his feet. And- in his brief discourse that followed he used words that flayed like the cat-o '-nine-tails. He said :—

' If there are cowards in the world, they are those who send anonymous letters. In my opinion,- they are worse . than assassins. I have seen scores'- of them in my time, and I have the greatest abhorence of the villains and - the reptiles who endeavor -to shield themselves in writing anonymous letters to public men about some one else. I have had scores of these letters, reflecting on oflicers in different parts of the 1 , Colony, sent to me by persons who, as I say, are, in my opinion, worse than assassins. The writing of " such letters is about as vile a thing as ' any man can do.' It is pleasant to learn that, the Premier's.castigation of ruffian anonymity was ' greeted with general expressions of approval by members.' * - But there are degrees in the cowaraice of anony-"" mous attack. Abyss calleth to abyss ; and there is a deeper depth jbhan that, of. assailing- an individual. There is, for "instance, the contemptible sniper who, over an ' alias ' or' pen-name, makes blackguardly at- ' tacks in the public press, not upon <an individual (for such vermin have a wholesome fear of the law of libel), 'but upon whole bodies of people, and most commonly upon the devoted Sisterhoods of the Catholic Church. 'An anonymous writer,' said Disraeli in his onslaught on the ' Globe ' in 1&36, ' should at» least display power ; but we can ' only view with contemptuous, levity, the., mischievous varlet who pelts us wit^i m;ud t as we are riding along, and then, hides, . be^hind a dust-bin.' ' Anonymous writing,' said Cardinal Manning,- 'is a dangerous trade. Few men can resist the temptation to write under a mask things which they would not say with open face.' And bitter a persecutor of Christians as the Emperor Trajan was, he had a sufficient sense of pagan uprightness and manly feeling to write to Pliny, Governor of Bithynia,- in 111, declaring that ' anonymous reports must not 'be admitted for any accusation. This, 1 added Trajan, •' is at once the very worst precedent, , and unworthy of our time.' But the principle that is uniworthy of- paganism and pagan tinies is deemed ' by, 'many to be good enough for soi-disant Christians when they set out with their barbarian weapons,- and their uncivilised methods of controversial warfare,- to take the scalp of ' Rome.'