RE SMYTHIES.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXV, Issue 3643, 23 March 1869, Page 5

RE SMYTHIES.

fottit Editor of the Daily SouthmK Cross. i Sir,— Mr. Lusk's letter of to ; day illustrates how miioh easier ifc ii tojunpnte motive-»than to deal with facts. Finding tbt facts againrt him, he aoguly hurl* charges of persecution and animus against mytelf and others who wiwh to free th» lf*al profeasion from the pretence in it of connoted felons. Personally, I have no feeling in regard to Mr. Smythiei j T have never come into contact with him ho a« to raise any feeling, and bad he continaed aSa private citizen neither I nor any «ne else would have raised a voice to prooUith his «xpU4e 1 (jrime to the world. But when, after nearly 20 years have elapsed, h« tries, on his owu assertion*, to reverse the verdict of twelve British juryiaen, based on sworu testimony, amd to thrust, himself into the rataks of the profes•ioo in this colonY, I d»n Se« no persecution »nd no animui s»ve a ri«ht one in the membeM «f th* profesiion doing al in their power to keep th<»ir rankn free from at least that diagraoe. It is paiuf al to dia cms any man's paat errorc, but If he challenges disousnon it ii not for him to call out Ptrwoution wke« he is eiposed. Mr. Smythies and his injudiCiou* friends have pertinaciously thrust him forward as a woroby man : they must not complain if others, taking a different view of hin, try to rub off the whitewash. The whole matter seems to me to lie in a nutshell : At« the members of the legal profesaion justified in u»ing every lawful means to exclude from their society a person who was oonvioud by an English jury of forgery with intent to defraud, and who now, after nearly twenty years, asserts, but does not prove, hia innocence ? It seems to me that by honourable men .there oan be hut one answer. But, perhaps, Mr. Lusk is as ignorant of the mewing of the word " honoHraU* " a* he prof«?§es w bo of the word •'respectable"?— lam, &0., Thomas B. Gillii^ Auckland; Maroh 20, 1869, .■■■lT — - »