TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3176, 2 September 1881, Page 2

TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1881.

According to telegrams from Dunedin the Bench at the City Court, in giving judgment in a case of assault, sympathised with tbe defendant "to some extent." Prom the tolegr.pb.ic reports to hand a more unprovoked assault can scarcely be imagined. Auan of the name of Walter Bose, Dunttiio, agent for a paper called the Liberty, waw the cotm'aiaant. Tbe pa'.mr is published nt Oh'istchurch. A per„_n named '_ld»ard Marlow, feeling aggrieved at some reference to himself in the Liberty, horsewhipped this agent, who, in all probability, bad no more to do with the objectionable paragraph tban bar! his cousin or his aunt. But, we presume, Marlow* thought it a fine thing to take it out of an unoffending agent, and perhaps, if be could have come across a very smali runner-boy of the Liberty he would have assaulted him also. The Bench, however, sympathised with Marlow, and thought that the public should move the Legislature to suppress papers of tbe Liberty description. The Bench forgot tbat such papers as the Liberty live and prosper by the patronage of the public—we rmy almost say by the special patronage of men and women of tbe Marlow class. If the Marlows of society steadily refused to read the socalled society journals, periodicals of that kind would soon cease to exist. But it is just because the Marlows. the Smiths, the Browns, and the Robinsons think themselves of some social importance, that they like to read about their unimportant doings. Snobbishness is what tbe Liberty lives by, on what it feeds, and by which it prospers. As long as Smiths, and Marlows, and Robinsons, and Browns, form so large a portion of the public there is little chance of the Legislature beiug moved to suppress papers of the Liberty description. If Marlow—not the particular Marlow of Dunedin —had seen a complimentary paragraph in tbe Liberty concerning the cut of his clothes, or his aristocratic appearance, we dare say he would not have taken the assinme allusion as in the least vulgar or objectionable. The innocent agent for the sale of the paper, instead of receiving a horsewhipping, might, perhaps, have been asked to take a drink with the young man, who would probably feel proud for many \?ceks iv consequence of being thought of sufficient importance to get noticed at all. But the society journal does not get the whole of its patronage from silly young men; its strongest support comes from women who delight to read the inane rubbish under the beading "Society." To the female mind there must be something fascinating in the information that " Mrs Z. looked charming in church last Sunday in a red bonnet and yellow feathers;" there are columns of such nonsense in papers of the Liberty kind, and the news they contain is greedily devoured. It is the absolute vulgarity of the wretched pandering to the taste of the complete snob that forms tbe charm of the society jotirnal to its supporters, and it will be found as impossible to suppress such papers as it would be to convert snobs into ladies and gentlemen.