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Lyttelton Times, Volume III, Issue 111, 19 February 1853, Page 10

To the Editor of the Lyttelton Times. Sir, —I have just received a copy of your last Saturday's paper, in which I observe a letter from W. Partridge, dated from this Bay. The statements of your correspondent, it is not necessary for me to notice, as the facts of the case are sufficiently well known to make such attacks upon me, under colour of a desire for good law, perfectly harmless. But I think it is incumbent upon me as a member of the community to expostulate with you for having in so indiscreet a manner lowered the character of your journal by admitting into its columns personalities of so glaring a nature as those which disfigured your last number. Whatever the matter might have been in truth, it is clearly one that you had no^ right to bring before the public unless in a faithful report of the proceedings before

the Eesident Magistrate at Akaroa, and every right-thinking person will join me in regretting that the spirit of the despicable " Paul Prys " and similar publications of the old country, - i should be introduced into a Canterbury journal. I am, Sir, Your's obediently, Ebenezer Hay. Pigeoa Bay, Feb. 16, 1853. [Mr. Partridge's letter was not a personal attack on Mr. Hay, but simply his version of a dispute between them. We published the letter without any comment whatever, and if it contained any falsehoods, it was in Mr. Hay's power to have met them with a plain statement of facts, which would have at once disposed of Mr. Partridge. Mr. Hay has not done so ; he has written a very abusive* letter which disproves nothing. Had he contented himself with giving " a faithful report of the proceedings before the Resident Magistrate at Akaroa," he would have advanced the interests of truth, and not committed himself by writing a very silly letter.]