LETTER FROM MR. MASON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume II, Issue 553, 21 August 1865, Page 5

LETTER FROM MR. MASON.

Tkk Index publishes the following : —■ "to tick editob or the 'index.' " Siu,—Time will develope the mystery as yet attending the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, late President of the United States, and the attempted assassination of Mr. Seward, his Secretary of State. I desire only to repel at ones the calumnious assertion of Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War. in his letter to Mr. Adams, printed in the London journals of this morning, that these acts were ' planned and set on foot by rebels, under pretence of avenging the South and aiding the rebel cause,' and of which he says there is ' evidence obtained.' " Mr. Stanton's letter is dated on the 15th of April, and states tliet Mr. Lincoln was assassinated in the theatre at half-past ten the previous night, and died ut. twenty minutes past seven on the previous morning of the day that he wrote. I addnce this to show how unlikely it is, in the hurried excitement and the necessary occupations attending such events, that any but the wildest theories would prevail in regard to the cause of the event--, or the objects ot the perpetrators. Mr. Stanton adopts that which he deemed would be the most useful before the public of his country. Should the ' evidence 'to which lie refers to support his calumny ever see the light, it will be scanned with the experience derived in regard to other evidence, unscrupulously fabricated in the same quurter during tho present war for base political eil'ect. It is the crudest conception, too, that the murder of Abraham Lincoln was planned and executed for the purpose of ' aiding tho rebel cause but I can well understand that it may have ma terial influence in aiding the c»u»e of that overpo wring party in the United States of which Mr. Stanton is tintype, and Andraw Johnson, who succeeds as President, with Butler of the notorious prefix, are the exponent? and leaders- - a party in whose path tho late President and his .Secretary were ackn obstacles in their projected schemes of plunder and rapine to follow their dominion over the Southern States. " For tho rest, 1 learn from a well-informed source in London that ' Wilkes Booth,' who is accused ot the deed, is a son of the celebrated Knglish actor of that name ; was of liis father's prnfessio i, which he pursued principally in the Northern t-tates ; and generally understood as inheriting those traits significant of his father's name, Junius Brutus Booth, by whom he was named John V\ ilkes after the great Knglish Radical—an oigin and mental training little likely to engender the slightest sympathy with he great cause of the Conservative Sou.h. crime which has been committed, none will vie" _ .t with more abhorence than he people of the > outh . but they will know, as will eq.iallv aU well balanced minds, that it is the necessary offspring of of bloodshed and murder m every fur.n of unbudled licens- which have signalised the invasion ot the -.outh by Northern armies, uorebuked certainly, and therefore instigated, bv their leaders and tho?e over them. "Pardon the fength of this note. I desired only instantly to repel tho atrocious calumnies in the letter I of Mr. Stanton.