To Correspondents.

New Zealander, Volume 7, Issue 517, 29 March 1851, Page 2

To Correspondents.

We have received a communication, signed " Alvah Smith," the writer of which complains of a paragraph which appeared in our columns in November last, to he eltect that a person, charged as " Obedth alias

Yankee Smith," (and upon whose aliases'— without hating the slightest knowledge of the case or the man beyond what the proceedings in the Court supplied — we made some comment) — had been fined at the Resident Magistrate's Court for a breach of the Cus» toms' Ordinance. At that time the writer did not think fit to identify himself with the party against whom the penalty was adjudged ; but as he now appears to think that the comments respecting that party were a grievance to hnn, we should have had no objection to insert his letter had it been couched in terms less offensive — particularly as it includes a testimonial to " Mr. Ahah Smith's respectability and character," signed by about thirty inhabitants of Wellington. We had to deal with a case in whifh a person, of whom we repeat we had not the slightest personal knowledge, was convicted in the Magistrate's Court of a practice which is so injurious to the fair trader who pays duty on his commodities, as well as so wrong on other grounds, that language much stronger than that we employed would not have exceeded the justice ot' the case.