OUTRAGED FEELINGS.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXII, Issue 2663, 30 January 1866, Page 4

OUTRAGED FEELINGS.

Wa are sure our readers will agree with us that never, in the whole course of their lives, have they known or heard of so gross an outrage on the feelings of two just and upright men, as was committed by the Daily Southern Cross in its issue of the 29 th instant. In yesterday's paper we were so utterly wicked and abandoned as to print and publish the following paragraph : — "An important iuquiry took place on Saturday afternoon in the Criterion Hotel (Mrs. Bond's), as to the origin of the calamitous fire which occurred on the previous night, as detailed iv our last publication, before T. M. Philson, Esq., Coroner, and a jury. The inquiry elicited considerable interest, as the feeling which pervaded the public mind was that the disastrous conflagration was the result of an iucendiarisin. Mr. J. MacCormick appeared to watch the proceedings on behalf of the insurance companies generally, and Mr. James Russell for Mr. Samuel McCoskrie, engineer, for whom the wooden buildings in which the fire originated were being erected. We may state that Messrs. Bridges and Jury were the contractors for the carpentry work, the amount of their contract being £82, the greater portionof which sumhad been paid them. They effected an insurance on the building for £200 in the New Zealand Insurance Company's offices, and on which they had but recently renewed the policy. We publish the evidence elsewhere, without desiring to oommonii upon it at present. The inquiry lasted about iour hours, and. resulted in the following verdict, the latter portion of which we cannot help saying is rather curiously worded : — 'The jury are unanimously of opinion that the fire which broke out in Mr. McCoskrie" s building, in Hobson-street, on the night of Friday, January 26th instant, was not accidental in its origin ; but by what person or persons such incendiarism was committed, there is not at present sufficient evidence to show. The jury also desire to express their disapprobation of the conduct of Henry Richard Jury, one of the contractors, iv stating his motives for effecting an insurance on the said building.' A report of the inquiry will appear to-morrow." Perhaps many of our readers will have trouble to fix on the obnoxious part of this paragraph. And that was precisely our case. When a legal gentleman waited upon us yesterday, and called our attention to the great injury we had iu£icted on his clients by its publication, we were really non-plussed. For the life of us we could not tell how or iv what manner we had inflicted a wound, " sharper than a serpent's tooth," on two guileless men, whom we never saw to our knowledge, and whom we certainly could not recognise without assistance, if we had made up our minds to atone for our offence by prostrating ourselves at their feet, and asking pardon in the dust and ashes of the Hobson-street fire block. We were greatly relieved, however, when we were informed, in the politest manner possible by the lawyer, that everything in the paragraph was strictly true; only that without the explanation of his clients, it had a tendency to act pre judiciously against their characters. The murder was out. We saw it all at a glance. " The truth is not to be told at all times," because it may " seriously reflect" upon somebody's character. And if somebody appears in an equivocal position by the truth being told, Mr. Coke-upon-Littleton, i 3 it the bounden duty of a public journalist to suppress the truth, in order that some body or other may appear to be somebody else ? We i think not. At least, we sbant do it. And so, when it was fully explained to us, we replied to our legal visitor that we would carefully peruse the report of the inquest on the Hobson-street fire, and that we should give his clients the benefit of our opinion. He, however, served us with the following notice, which we publish, that the ends of the earth may know where there is a champion ready to defend the " seriously-reflected"-on section of mankind :—: — " Queen-street, Auckland, "January 29, 1866. "Gentlemen, — I am instructed to draw your attention to a paragraph in this day's Southern Cross, having reference to the late fire in Hobsonstreet, and which my clients, Messrs. Bridges and Jury, complain of as seriously reflecting upon their characters ; and I have to call for such public explanation as may, a* far as possible, obviate the injurious effect of the obnoxious paragraph, "lam, gentlemen, " Yours, very obediently, " J. E. Macdonald. "To Messrs. Robert J. Creightonand Alfred Scales, " O'Connell-street, Auckland." The obnoxious words are as follow :—": — " We may state that Messrs. Bridges and Jury were the contractors for the carpentry, the amount of their contract being £82, the greater portion of which sum had been paid them. They effected an insurance on the building for £200, in the New Zealand Insurance Company's Offices, and on which they had but recently renewed the policy." This is all quite true, said the legal representative of Messrs. Bridges and Jury ; but it would raise suspicion in the minds of the public, if it were not further stated, as it came out in evidence, that they were bound to rebuild the house at their own cost if destroyed in the course of erection. We thought this a very reasonable thing "to state ; and if true, it certainly does remove some of the impression which the naked truth of the paragraph is calculated to create. But is it true ? We have referred to the report of the proceedings, for the truthfulness and impartiality of which we can vouch, and we unhesitatingly say the explanation given to us by Mr. Mucdonald, and sought to be given on oath by his clients, is not sustained on the evidence. We challenge him or them to refute us on this point. Does this "public explanation, as f»r as possible, obviate the

injurious effect of the obnoxious paragraph ?" If it does not, w are not to blame. The evidence speaks for itself. It tells its own tale; and we invite its attentive perusal by our readers. Messrs. Bridges and Jury have told their own story ; we have repeated it in our report of the evidence; and neither from their sworn testimony, nor from the testimony of Mr. McCoskrie, the owner of the building, is there anything to warrant us in saying that the contractors are legally bound, or bound in any form which may be enforced against them, to spend a shilling in re-building the tenement in question. On the contrary, one of the parties, Henry Richard Jury, told the Foreman that he was not prepared to say what he was to do with the insurance money. We think, in this case, it would have been well if Messrs. Bridges and Jury had been advised not to advertise their injured feelings. When men parade their wrongs through a lawyer's office, the first thing done by the other side is to examine whether they have suffered any ; and in this case we don'b believe they have any cause whatever to complain. Quite the other way. We think, when the New Zealand Insurance Company pays them tjhe £200, they may congratulate themselves. The contract will have been a good one : £200 for destruction by fire of a house which did not belong to them ; for the material of which they had not paid a shilling ; and for the labour in building of which they had been paid within £10 of their full claim by contract. But we think at the same time that the Insurance Companies owe it to the public not to let tbi» matter drop. The jury pronounces the fire to have been incendiary. We quite concur in this opinion. We have not the faintest idea of who set fire to the shavings, or who left them there in such quantities oontrary, it would seem, to the rule of the trade; but we do know that much loss and suffering have been inflicted on private individuals, as well as los s to the insurance offices. We poiut to the losses of Mr. James Henderson and Mr. A. Black -old and respected settlers of Auckland— as examples of the grievous wrong inflicted on innocent persons by tht felon act committed by setting Mr. McCoskrie's new house on fire. Public morality, public safety, and public justice alike demand a more searching investigation than, that before the coroner. And now, as regacda the injured individuals named in the lawyer's note, we have this to say, that we would be only too ready to apologise for pain causelessly inflicted by us on anyone ; but we cannot apologise for stating the plain truth. We do not attempt, or wish to palliate in the least, the effect of yesterday's paragraph. It is true : there let it rest. But we say this further, that we should altogether fail in our duty as journalists did we not resist this impertinent attempt to stifle the discussion of a grievous public and private wrong, the perpetrator of which will, we trust, be brought to condign punishment.