REV. L. M. ISITT IN REPLY.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 9022, 7 February 1895, Page 5

REV. L. M. ISITT IN REPLY.

10 XHB KDITOB O? . • 6m,—l am impressed with the excessive' modesty of your journal, aa displayed 'in the sub-leader of the sth inst., in which you again take us to task for our mode of \ conducting the prohibitionist campaign* You entirely ignore the fact that it is you, and not I, who have played the pbarisee,. and that throughout you have assumed the > l right to teach and reprove na while yow - own column's have contained low personalis • tics and journalistic, dishonesties such as have never denied the pages *f tbeProMet*. Honitt, Your contention ..that there ia no J

respsnaibility on the part of tbe Prkss for what is mainly its evening reprint, is absurd. The Press Company is certainly to blame for the fact that their opponents in political and social matters havefor months past been lampooned in cartoons unworthy of any respectable paper. Yon credit mo with inability to see the difference between a " McLachlan " cartoon and the " ChrystaU" illustration. I have no difficulty in tho matter. In the one a man who yields to the temptation engendered by the drinking habits we condemn, but that you so vigorously champion, disgraces himself, and in tho hoar of his humiliation is vindictively pilloried by you in a cartoon for which you can plead no good purpose, but which simply wreaks your > political spite upon a fallen opponent. For there is no reader of your columns who : believes that that cartoon would have appeared had Mr McLachlan been a Conservative. We, on tho other band, with no grain of personal feeling, and with the full knowledge that it imperilled friendships of years' standing, deemed it an imperative duty to force upon the minds of Christian people th. shocking inconsistency of churches, which by formal resolution con- . demn the liquor traffic, and then, while i they ostraciso the man who sells nobblers, reward with their highest honours those - who sell drink in bottles and kega. We did not attack the private life of anyone. The Church's purity ia the public weal; and the whole point of our illustrations lay . in their emphasis of what we hold to be a publio scandal. How you, sir, in any case, : dare to school us for not conducting the Prohibitionist with decency and honour is beyond our comprehension. Despite the noble motto " Nihil utile quod non honestum " that heads your paper, the public have : not forgotten, if you have, that it is not many months since you published in your weekly edition, for the benefit of your sporting readers, what purported to be the likeness of a celebrated New Zealand racehorse, but which was in reality a pirated picture of an English horse slightly altered to suit tho circumstances. " Nihil utile quod non honestum." When we, sir, are guilty of a pictorial lie of that ilk we will meekly accept your mentorship. Your sneer at the fact that we have once apologised for matter appearing in our columns to escape a libel action is equally unfortunate for you. That matter was supplied to us in written form by one of your employees, who when a Court case was threatened said that if he went into the box to give evidonce in our favour he feared dismissal from the Press Company for aiding the prohibitionists, aud it was in deference to those fears, groundless or otherwise (as he could judge better than we), that we apologised and paid solicitor's costs. If yon question this statement, I refer you to our solicitors, Messrs Caygill and VYiddowson, who will substantiate it. Iv conclusion, we value your expressed sorrow at the waning power of the temperance movement at its exact worth. You really need not shed tears in secret or ink in your columns over so visionary an ill. According to you and the liquor party, Taylor, Isitt and Co. havo been destroying tbe cause by their fauaticism and extreme, for tbe last eight years, and yet, strange to say, the cause was never co lusty, prospects never so bright, supporters never so numerous and enthusiastic as they are today. Good-bye, Mr Editor. If you are satisfied with this little encounter, we are abundantly. By and bye, when we have won the victory, I havo no doubt that tbe Christchurch PitESS, true to its habit of saying the politic thing for the moment, will furnish an eulogistic article on temperance reform and the noble and selfdenying efforts of the reformers. Till then believe mc to be—Yours, &c, Leonabd M. Isitt. [We have dealt with this letter in another column.—Ed. Press.]