MR WILLIAMS EXPLAINS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3812, 3 October 1883, Page 3

MR WILLIAMS EXPLAINS.

[To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph.] Sir,—l have to express my thanks to you for the "rubbing dovrn" I received from the Herald this morning. You have often compared your contemporary Avith a female, but a school-girl Avould, perhaps, be a more apt comparison. You see, you bowled the Herald's editor out in a piece of crass ignorance in his reference to Pontius Pilate as a Roman emperor, and he,—or rather I should say she—did not like it. For her peace of mind it Avas necessary that she should "pass the slipper "—a game with Avhich most girls are acquainted—and _ so, while she left you alone, she pitched into me. Referring to tho meeting of the AVorking Men's Club, the Herald accuses mo of making "havoc with tho English language." Good Heaven ! this from a paper that does not knoAV the difference betAveen Pontius Pilate and a C.-e.sar! And then the Herald goes on in thefollowing feminine style:—AVhen Mr AVilliams " referred to tho ' standing orders ' of the Borough Council avo kindly put into his mouth the correct expression 'bye-laws,' for it is by byelaws that the Council proceedings are regulated." Oh: so I must suppose I Avantcd the club to adopt the score or so of bye-laws from the regulations concerning streets, footways, and traffic, to the rcmoA _1 of nuisances, and the licensing of hackney cabs ! My proposal, and Avhich I read, Avas this :—"That the general conduct of business at all meetings of tho club, general and otherwise, be the same as that adopted by and laid down in the standing orders of the Napier Borough Council.'' I do not Avant the Herald to " kindly put into my mouth" such utter rubbish as " bylaws " for "standing orders." Next Aye shall be told that the statutes of New Zealand regulate the proceedings of tho General Assembly, and that it is improper to say '• standingordcrs," for it is by statute that parliamentary proceedings are regulated. The Herald concludes by threatening to report all that I say tho next time, "nonsense and all." It is the onlyreparation that that journal can make me ; but if, in tho meantime, the editoi-AVOuld read her Bible, and give a glance occasionally at a history book, she would inflict much less nonsense on her readers, and perhaps would not for the future confuse a governor of a province with the sovereign of an empire.—l am, kc, R. AVilliams. Napier, October, 3, 1883.