The Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1868.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume III, Issue 17, 21 January 1868, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1868.

Our contemporary the Colonist treats its readers this morning to one of those precious effusions by means of which it periodically gives veut to the superfluous malice and personality in its idiosyncrasy which "would otherwise be continually overflowing, and the intermittent discharge of which would in all probability result in its speedy extinction. In the present instance, consistently with its very intelligible enmity towards successful evening papers generally, it pours out the vials of its virtuous indignation, upon the Hokitika Evening Star, for republishiug as an original article a leader on the Customs Kevenue which had appeared three days previously in the Nelson Examiner. We are not prepared to defend the conduct of our West Coast contemporary, which is indeed quite inexplicable, since the detection of the piracy would seem to have been inevitable, but if. is impossible not to smile at the anxiety displayed by the Colonist. to denounce the fraud thus perpetrated on the Examiner, which, it might have been supposed, was quite capable of holding its own under such circumstances. This, however, is probably only another outward and visible sign of the marvellously excellent understanding which, after so many years of deadly warfare, now subsists between these two journals, and which, however edifying to the world genendly and profitable to themselves, is nevertheless regarded by many as a monstrous and very '"wnholy alliance.' The object of our virtuous contemporary however in the present iusiauce is suffici«*J tly iraiispan nt. Stinging under the administration of a slight oastigatioti which we leit. i( our d niy toii-flict in consrqueooe of a very stupid blunder into which it had ftillf'n, mid upuii whicii it thought proper to found sown strictures of the most groundless and uu»raei<»us nature on the conduct, of th« Government towards a young nobleman now on a visit to this colony, it makes this literary piracy on tiie part of the Hukitika. Evening S ar an excuse for reiterating 'very gratuituou.^ly a most ungenerous charge against ibis journal,, which was met and fully rebutted at the time, and which has been lom£ since dismissed from every memory save •that of the envious and malicious editor of the Colonist. As that individual however has again taken upon himself the not very credi tattle office of public informer, — oblivious, as it would seem, of the timehonored adage which enjoins that 'those who live iv glass houses should not throw stones,' — he must not be surprised if we allude to other larcenies nearer home of a far more wholesale aud shameless nature than auy which he claims to have, delected i;i the columns of journals that have achieved a popularity aud acceptance in the community generally which the Colonist, perhaps not unjmturally, grudges them. It would not be

out of place under such circumstances, for instance, to allude to the oft. repeated appropriation by that journal of whole columns of original matter which has previously appeared in the Examiner, and which, moreover, by a process doubtless sufficiently explicable by the initiated, but which has frequently afforded fertile subject for conjecture amougst those who are unacquainted with the secret aud unhallowed ties which now unite our two contemporaries in so strange and ominous a compact, has actually appeared in precisely the same type I But these are rnystei ies so deep, aud requiring bo intimate an acquaiutauce with the arcana of commercial dealings, that we must decline to enter upon such widely debatable ground. Again, if it were quealiori of morality and equity, we should be justified in exposing the unworthy artifice only recently reported to in reference to the publication of the Assessment, in order to silence the just claims of this journal on the consideration of the Board of Works. But we prefer for once to select our weapons from the armory of our adversary, and the Colonist of this moTiiug affords us ample choice. The heading under which the remarks appear to which we have directed attention, in conjunction with an article on the Government Telegraphic Monopoly in an adjoining column, suggests another larceny committed by that journal, if possible, of a still more flagrant and nefarious character. ' Stoleu Fi-e,' whether abstracted by Prometheus or by the Hokitika Evening Star, not unnaturally associates itself in men's minds with ' the electric spark,' and as far as our contemporary is concerned, the association is most unfortunate, for it inevitably provokes comment upon an act of dishonesty on the part of the Colonist which that journal would doubtless have desired to remain unnoticed, but which, although now for the first time alluded to in our columns, has not been undetected or unappreciated by the public. We allude to the systematic appropriation by the Colonist of the bimonthly telegrams of European intelligence via Suez and Panama, for the supply of which this journal pays the Government at the rate of £50 per annum. On each occasion 6ince the resumption of the publication of these telegrims in the Evening Mail, the Colonist, whilst distinctly announcing its intention not to comply with the terms of payment enjoined by the Government, (as ; ts contemporaries, iv order to meet the public convenience, have done), has not hesitated to copy the telegram into its columns, aud moreover, has published it as an Extra, charging twopence for the same, and thus actually making capital out of the expenditure of its more liberal contemporaries ! As .we have more than once stated, we have no sort of objection to the publication of the telegram in the Colonist, but common justice aud honesty — putting courtesy and other considerations aside, as hardly to be expected from such a quarter — would, it might have been imagined, have suggested at all events the delay of a few hours, in order to allow those to whose liberality the public is indebted for this information, imperfect though it be, to reap whatever trifling profit might be detivable from their greater enterprise and regard for the general convenience. But the Colonist, whilst expeudiug a vast amouut of absurd indignation upon the comparatively trivial offences aud shortcomings of its contemporaries, experiences no compunction whatever in perpetrating unblashingly and without any apology whatever, an overt act of dishonesty, for which it is just as amenable to punishment aud public reprobation, as the dealer who appropriates his neighbors' trade marks to facilitate the sale of his own inferior goods, or the pickpocket who avails himself of the crowded thoroughfare to help himself to the property of the unwary bystauder. This is, at all events, 'logic which is not likely to be acceptable to grown men who uuderstand what taxation and deficil mean,' aud we leave the Colonist to chew the bitter cud of the reflections which these remarks must iuevitably call forth.