THE LATE ARCHDEACON WILLIAMS.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXIII, Issue 3135, 3 August 1867, Page 4

THE LATE ARCHDEACON WILLIAMS.

lo the Editor of the Daily Souxhirk Gbosb. Sib,— There is an old adage— "De mortuiai nil nisi] bonum." An article in your issue of the 20th instant is calculated to give pain to the friends of the late Archdeaaon Williams, and to do injustice to his character. It is no doubt the production o{ 3 friend ; < but is it a judicious production ? To what purpose is it said that the late Mr. Williams, " with all his faults, must be regarded as a great man ?" The onlyi faults hiß friends ever heard of were those, falsely imputed to him to serve the selfish purposes of unprincipled men. No doubt, it was frqm mere 'thought-, lessneas, or perhaps to give an appearance of what is called liberality, so often assumed at the expense of truth, rather than to suggest some excuse for those who made Mr. Williams the.viotim of a most bitter. _ persecution, or to give some countenance to the vile slanders which led the Church ' Missionary Society to discard for a time their most valuable servant, that the words quoted were used. The general friendliness of the article forbids any other supposition. Nevertheless suoh is their tendency. After a vain endeavour to get the late Archdeacon to receive a retiring pension from the Society — he constantly declaring that his controversy was hot one of money, but of character— the committee of that Society were constrained at length to invite him to resume his former t position at the head of the New Zealand mission ; ' and thus, so far ai in them lay, to do justice to his character, and to throw discredit upon his slanderers. In equally bad taste is the observation that "before the advent of the settler his light paled, and that, " if he brought down upon himielf the ill opinion of the colonist, it was because of the strong ruling love of the race. for whom he had, done and suffered so much.'* jffe must be a very Insignificant character 1 who never, provokes ill will j whoever uniformly acts upon the principles of Christianity, is sure, in some, shape or other, to suffer persecution; and , that persecution will be in proportion to the energy with which he has oarried his principles into action. The colonist*, whose " ill opinion" he is stated to have " brought down upon himself," were not the early colonists of the North, who had an opportunity of knowing, his real character— all of whom would have admitted that it was in the greatest measure to his influence with the natives that they were indebted for the comparative security in which they, lived — but those who rjßceivpdjand, adopted the virulent, slanders, put into circulation fyr the interested purposes of designing men, haying,, themselves no knowledge of -the faots neoeiiaryjto form a judgment. ' ", . -, ' ' ,>",l<, „, ,- Of the great disinterestednets and behevolen.ee, of , Relate Archdeacon, those ajton© can jadgewaqg

enjoyed his intimacy — and those only to a limited ' extent — for of htm, more than of moat men, it may be truly said that the left hand knew not what the right hand did. It is only justice to his memory, however, to state that from the time he entered the service of the Church Missionary Society he was contented with the bare subsistence which that Society afforded to its New Zealand missionaries, and that he transferred to the Society his naval halfpay, which was added to its funds until, on its being known at the Admiralty that he had entered into holy orders, the half -pay was. stopped. It is stated, in the article referred to, that Mr. Williams entered the navy on the 10th May, 1815, and on the 29th August, 1815, was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. This is a clerical error. He entered the navy in 1805, and was in active service from that date till the Peace, having taken part in many brilliant actions, among which was the capture of the 'Mauritius,' when he was wounded,[and of the American ship 'Constitution,' by H.M. a. ' Endymion,' Captain Hope. If the greatness of men were estimated by the good they have done, and the evil they have prevented, few men would stand higher than the late 1 Archdeacon Williamt— not for what he did in the service of his country, but for his forty-four years of missionary life. But such men look for a higher reward than the praise of their contemporaries. They look for that "rest which remain eth for the people of God," in full confidence that, however little they are appreciated here, thither " their works do follow them."— l am, Ac, A Constant Ruadbr. [If our esteemed correspondent would refer to the article in question, he would find .thai; the words, " with all his faults, must be regarded as a great man," referred to Bishop Selwyn, and not to the late Archdeacon Williams. We willingly insert the' foregoing letter, because we think th« ; character of the late venerated missionary is the common property of the colony. We offer no opinion beyond' this on the present occasion. — Ed. D.B.C.] '