" REBUKES."

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 6, 20 May 1871, Page 4

" REBUKES."

An article in last Tuesday's Colonist, as usual, sternly " rebukes " us, and all whom ignorance, stupidity, or wickedness still keep without that journal's fold, and from that journal's high moral platform. In it, however, exception is very justly taken to au insinuafciou couveyed by some writer in the Otayo Bally Times. It is to the effect, that Mr. Vogel is not likely to return to the colony after his success iv the English money market. For once, we are at one with the Colonist, aud on the subject of Mr. Yogel. We are Mr. Vogel's determined political opponents ; but, although we hold him unscrupulous in pursuit of power, and not less unscrupulous as to the means of retaining it, we are tree to admit, nay, we hold it an act of simple justice to affirm, that we look upon any such insinuation as brutal aud baseless scurrility. No one who knows the reputation in which Mr. Vogel's private character, as to pecuniary matters, is held among those who have been brought into contact witb him in private life — aud they are not a few — will for an instant believe him capable of anything inconsistent with a delicate sense of honour in all pecuniary transactions. Fond as he is of power, he is certainly incapable of abusing power to eurich himself. The insinuation, too, is as puerile as it is scurrilous. In England, at least, Mr. Vogel could not, if he would, convert to his private use any fraction of the loan ; and no one who knows him will believe that he would anywhere do so even if he had the power. The unerring rapidity, however, with which the Colonist has pounced down upon this silly though scandalous insinuation, makes the more

ridiculous the imputations it has brought against us. Why not have shewn up our alleged libels and personalities, aa it has this absurdity ? A writer in our columns is accused of having abused friendly intercourse to blacken Mr. Vogel. No one fact has been used by us in criticising Mr. Vogel, which was not fully and fairly in possession of the public. ~\Ve arc taunted with continually throwing Mr. Yogel's "low origin" in his teeth. Until we read it in the columus of the Colonist, we were not aware that his origin was " low ;" nor do we yet see how his origiu matters to us or to our contemporary, auy more than the supposed profession, or purely hypothetical theological opinions of our presumed contributor, which are freely alluded to in a communication published by that journal. At the risk, however, of similar amenities, we must venture to remind our contemporaiy that, while " evil communications corrupt good manners," they improve none. The case must be weak indeed, when the only resource is found to lie in abusing the opposing advocate.