'Verify Your References '

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 10, 7 March 1907, Page 23

'Verify Your References '

Brownson and Newman were sticklers for the sound and very necessary motto in all discussion : ' Verify your references.' The motto will, we thank, be burned into the memory of a former M.l-I.K. (Mr. Meredith) who has been serving up some high-temperature antiHome Rule misinformation to the ' Waimate Adver- _ User.' One item— a .piece de resistance— was an alleged ' attack on street preachers at Clifton.' Trusting, apparently, with a faith that was simple and childlike, to an Orange leaflet that we dealt with some, time ago, the ex-legislator credited the story to ' " The Weekly Irish Times " of 13th September ' last, page 13.' Whereupon Dean Regnault (who had taken the trouble to ' verify the references ') promptly replied W'" "There was no issue of the " Weekly Irish Times " of September 13 th last ; there is nci such place as Clifton, County Fermanagh! — Clifton is in England, and well known as the fashionable ' watering-place near Bristol. The affray mentioned by Mr. Meredith as related in the " Weekly Irish Times " of September 13th last is not mentioned in any of the five weekly issues of that' paper in last September,' And now there is a sum of £50 waiting tci "drop into the exchequer of the Waimate Hospital if the too trusting legislator can 'Verify his references.'