A PRESS CONVENTION.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 11, Issue 819, 19 January 1867, Page 4

A PRESS CONVENTION.

(From the New Zealand Herald.) Though it is to the proprietors and conductors of the public journals of New Zealand that we noW specially address ourselves, yet the people at large are as much interested in the matter in question as the class to which we have alluded. A free and an independent Press is the great preservator of liberty in all countries; and exactly in proportion as a Government is able to cripple and subject the Press, is it able to infringe with impunity upon the rights and privileges of the people. We have not in New Zealand, as in Great Britain, a united and powerful Press — a real Estate of the realm — standing, as it were, between the governing and the governed, overawing the license of the one, and checking the tendency to abuse and oppression in the other. It is that we may preserve the vitality of the Press in New Zealand sound and healthy, so that, as necessity arises, it may assume these functions, and wield them with a strong and powerful hand in the cause of the State, that we now write. The moment has fully come in this colony when the Press must, by a combined effort [of its various members, assert its true position, and defend itself from the encroachment of the ruling powera. " The King never dies," and whether the head of the Government be Weld or Stafford, or any other leading statesman of the day, the feeling of antagonism to the Press still lives. The aim in all is alike. What one minister attempts to do and fails to carry out, another, by a different combination of circumstances, succeeds in accomplishing, and this will go on until the common object is attained, and, the Press weakened and crippled, its influence destroyed— a few governing families may enjoy undisturbed the privilege of farming the colony and people of New Zealand as their own estate, and as they please. This is what we are coming to in New Zealand. A combined effort, however, on the part of the Press itself would be able to counteract even yet the consummation of the evil. What we propose is the holding of a newspaper congress, to which every public journal in the colony should send its representative, there to decide such course of action for general adoption by the Press as might best preserve that institution from the craft and assaults of the Government and all its works. Such meeting of congress should take place previously to the next, and, if need be, to every subsequent sitting of the General Assembly, and might be held in whatever city or town of New Zealand might be considered the most convenient for all parties. Writing for an extreme northern journal, we unhesitatingly pledge ourselves to attend at whatever part of the colony it may be considered most generally convenient to meet. Of course we are clearly understood that it is not proposed that the business of such Congress should travel beyond the action of the Government as affecting the Press of the colony, for it is manifestly impossible, even were it otherwise advisable, that it could do so. As regards, however, the action of the Government with respect to the "fourth estate," the representatives of the New Zealand journals would have one common ground. on which men of every shade of political opinion coiild meet irrespective of who might be the Ministers of the day, and what their general measures. Such an association would be all powerful for the purpose for which it was convened. No Government could stand against it. We have seen what individual protest has done to save the Press from the encroachments of the Government of the day — how signally it has failed — how the stamp tax, which one Government could not succeed in imposing upon it, has been saddled upon us by another — how there is yet looming in the distance the discontinuance of the Suez route, by which newspapers forwarded to Europe are charged one penny only, for that by Panama, by which they will be charged a postage of threepence ; nay, that at this very moment such papers as are not marked " via Suez" arc not forwarded at all, being detained for the Panama route, and then condemned for want of "sufficient postage." Happily, this is not the case yet with letters, the postage by each route being the same — though we ask the Government by what right they detained nearly one-half tliQ December mail about 20 days in Wellington, the letters of which had been intended by the writers to be forwarded by way of Suez. These are matters which should come within the cognizance of a Newspaper Congress, and on which a united action of the Press should be taken. There is a matter, too, which, trivial as it may appear, is worthy of more than passing notice— we allude to the proposal of the Government to admit ordinary .advertisements into the Government Gazette. To what may this not lead. First will come advertisements, then political intelligence, and then, gradually, as the local journals of the colony are ruined and suppressed, political leaders. We may, if this be permitted, find fostered into existence a State journal, to be wielded, not in the interests of the governed but of the governors ; a powerful engine of misrepresentation and oppression. These are no trifling matters ; we have seen the impotency of individual protest. We can depend upon it no longer. The bundle of sticks must be bound together, and strength must be found in unity. If the Press be true to itself it may become, not the fourth, but, as expressing the voice of the people, whence flows all power, all honor, the first estate in the country, all powerful for the advancement of freedom, morality, and intelligence. We trust that the proposal now made, and which has been suggested by the remarks of other journals, which we publish elsewhere, will be received by the press of the colony as a matter for general consideration. Local jealousies, political differences, and all other difficulties, may well be laid aside on this occasion. We have our own views upon how the arrangement may be practically carried out, which we may mention hereafter, but in the meantime we leave it to our brother journalists to say whether they are willing that such a congress shall be' convened for the defence of the Press. If so, we do not apprehend much difficulty in arranging the place of meeting, and other necessary matters.