THE GREY-STREET FIRE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume V, Issue 1396, 9 May 1868, Page 3

THE GREY-STREET FIRE.

If the Cross found it necessary for the sake of avoiding a prosecution for libel, to apologise a second time to Mr. Fleming for ifs very improper publication of certain official documents, it need not have gone out of its way to throw the blame of their publication upon the Commissioner of Police. Even had the Commissioner caused these documents to be handed to the reporter of the Cross, and the Cross, as it did, usedthem, it would liavebeen ungenerous to have thus repaid the man who had supplied it with an item of news thought worthy of publication. It is not true, however, that Mr. Naughton did anything of the kind. The Cross reporter was allowed, as was our own, to read tho documents merely as a guard to the prevention of the publication of unreliable intelligence, not as a statement to be copied off in shorthand and published in full. The apology of the Cross contains, wc are sorry to see, three distinct attempts to throw the odium of the publication of libel, of which it was itself guilty, on the shoulders of the Commissioner. " Mr. Commissioner Naughton," it says, " caused it (the letter) to be handed to our reporter" — again ; " we deeply regret that this journal "should have been accidentally made the vehicle of publishing, <&c. and yet again," we trust that this apology and statement of the facts will fully satisfy that gentleman (Mr. Fleming) of the entire absence, on our part, of any intention, &c." If an apology in the first instance was due to Mr. Fleming, we think one is now quite as much due to Mr. Naughton and the Police force, and we trust our cotcmporary will at once make the amende honorable. We would much rather, however, have seen him, so apologise in the first instance, as not only to have escaped the consequences of an action for libel, but in such a way as to have acted with grace and candour.