CORRESPONDENCE.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XX, Issue 3933, 23 June 1877, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed by correspondents.

MR. HARDING'S REPORT. Sic, — Perhaps you will afford me the necessary space to correct certain misstatements in your local of this morning on the above subject. If you had contented yourself with quoting my own words from the Telegraph, I would not have troubled you ; but as you have distorted them, I think a brief reply necessary. In the first place, I did not, and do not, " take upon myself the responsibility of the epithet ' hasty scribbler,' " nor of any other expression used by his Honor and reported by me. I am, however, responsible for the Telegraph\s report— the correctness of which I again " re-affirm." I thought I had done so plainly enough in yesterday's Telegraph. Your charge of " grossly misreporting" the Judge, I deny. That he used the words above quoted I can affirm, upon the evidence of my notes, of nly memory, and — since you have called in question the correctness of the report — the unsought testimony of more than one disinterested person present in Court at the time. In placing \ipon record words distinctly and deliberately used by the Judge in charging the jury, I fail to see the " gross impropriety" of which I am accused. Painful as those remarks may have been to one of the parties in the case, I should not have felt justified in toning them down. Had you not given them unnecessary prominence, they might scarcely have provoked a second thought ; as it is, some of your readers have been forcibly struck with them as being peculiarly happy and appropriate. If you will kindly find space for these vindicatory remarks, it will be unnecessary for me to notice any further endeavors on your part to "affix" your " brand.' "As if" (to quote your own counsel) " any brand they could affix would be permanent !" Such a course on my part would be simple waste of time ; for it will not soon be forgotten that any damage to character or reputation it is in your power to inflict^as assessed by a Napier special jury — is represented by the smallest coin of the realm. — I am, &c, R. Coupland Harding. June 22, 1877. [Mr Harding, on being cross-questioned on the subject, admits that " his notes were equally susceptible of the interpretation ' the person who hastily scribbled.' " In fact, by a slight but ingenious change in the wording, a perfectly innocuous remark on the part of the Judge — supposing him to have made it — is converted into an epithet of contempt. Apparently there is an art in misreporting as well as in everything else.— Ed. H.B.H.]