The Hastings Standard Published Daily. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 1896. MR WARD'S AFFAIRS.

Hastings Standard, Issue 38, 10 June 1896, Page 2

The Hastings Standard Published Daily.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 1896. MR WARD'S AFFAIRS.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrongs that need resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

The Premier, in the speech he delivered at C'hristchurch last Friday, seemed to think that the whole of the newspapers of the colony were doing something very scandalous in publishing the affidavits filed and the evidence tendered in the Supreme Court at Dunedin with respect to the liquidation of an assut of fee Colonial Bank,

We fail to see the enormity of the crime, and can in no way endorse the sentiments of the Premier. We are, as may be well understood, no admirers of the Press Association, but in common fairness we must say that in giving full publicity to the proceedings referred to above, the Association was merely doing its duty to its shareholders and to the public. The affairs of the Colonial Bank and the affairs of the Hon J. (}. Ward, in so far as they overlap his official position, are of great public interest, and to have sujipressed the evidence given in the Supreme Court, or in any way burked its publicity, would have been a grave error.

It will be in the recollection of our readers that when the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company was in process of reconstruction, and the directors of the old institution were compelled to submit themselves to public examination, very full reports were given of the proceedings, and, if we remember correctly, a verbatim report was given in that enterprising journal, the New Zealand Herald. Who is Mr Ward that his affairs should be treated with special scantity ? Were he a private individual no notice would have been taken of the proceedings, unless, of course, the evidence was of such a nature as to be of public interest. But Mr Ward is not a private individual, for he cannot separate the Hon -J. (J. Ward, Colonial Treasurer, from Mr J. (r. Ward, Chairman of the J. (i. Ward Farmers' Association. Kven if he were the most obscure person in the country, the sensational nature of the evidence and its exposition of modern commercial morality would have entitled it to publicity. The Press of the colony, instead of having been guilty of a scandalous action, have rendered the public valuable service, and the Premier's denunciation, though excusable when viewed as coming from a man who has been badly hit by a friend, is none the less unwarranted.