PRECEPT AND PRACTICE.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 9020, 5 February 1895, Page 6

PRECEPT AND PRACTICE.

TO TUB EDITOR 07 THE PHLS3. Sir, —Oα the last day of the year you informed your readers that you " did not fill your columns with personal lampoons of respectable citizens." intending them to infer that in this respect you were immeasurably superior to the prohibitionists. Had our modesty allowed us to assume that you would regard us as " respectable citizens," we might have reminded you that many coarse cartoons, such as we never publish, and in which we frequently'figured, bad been issued from your office. We are, however, so little concerned about them that I scarcely remember in what ludicrous aspects we were represented, but the impression remains that we were " sneered at ' and "lampooned" for our earnest work. More recently, you referred in the •ame superior tone an was adopted in your former leader, to a picture of a certain merchant which appeared in our columns as being " what professes to be an engraving " of that gentleman, and yon . waxed righteously indignant that we should print it at aIL And yet on a sheet which bears the imprint, "Printed by Henry Ashmeal .Kent, of 121 Salisbury street, Christ'church, and published by John Russell Bbcnt, of Buccleuch street;,. Lin wood, for the Christohurch Press Company (Limited), at their offices, 208 Cashel street, Chrietchuroh," a cartoon appeared, «o low in tone and bo utterly destitute of any pretension to artistio merit, that, when we discussed the propriety of reprinting it in our own columns to indicate the low ideal of our mentors, we determined that, not even for such a purpose, could we admit » production so coarse.—Yours, Aα,

Leonard Isito. [Wβ have dealt with this letter in our leading columns.—Ed. Press.]