PERSONAL EXPLANATION.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXIII, Issue 3162, 5 September 1867, Page 4

PERSONAL EXPLANATION.

To tho Editor of the Daily Southwwi Ceosi. Sib, — As a party holding, as I have, a respectable position in this city for the last seven years, and having through the columns of the iZeraWbeenmostinfamously vilified,l trust, with your usual readiness to give every one an opportunity of setting themselves right with the public, you will kindly give insertion to these few lines in your next impression. I am one of nine forming the party owning what is called the "British claim," at Karaka flats, Thames. In conjunction with my mates I worked on that claim for upwards of a month, and out of my own pocket advanced £15 for provisions, not one penny of which money has tip to the present writing been returned. I received a protection order for 14 days with respect to that claim. William Sutton, one of the present claimholders, informed me that he was empowered to collect subscriptions for the slabbing of the shaft we were making ; and believing as I did that my name, added to his own, in the advertisement, which appeared in your journal, would have a certain weight in obtwaiag increased

subscriptions, I consented to its being so added. Sir, out of the whole of the moneys so collected not one farthing passed through, nay hands, my sole reason for appending my name to the advertisement being a belief on my part that I was benefiting the other claim-holders. As my character has been bo vilely assailed by the correspondent of the Herald, I have made arrangements, in the event of his not making an ample apology i.hrough your and your contemporary's columns, to bring an action for libel against him. In the meantime I leave you and your readers to decide whether I have not met with most cruel treatment for merely endeavouring to carry out the views of all those who are sincerely desirous that the goldfields at the Thames should be fully developed.— l am, &0., W. COPPEJLL. Auckland, September 4, 1867.