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New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5497, 30 June 1879, Page 4

In accordance with a suggestion of the Mayor of Auckland, the Dunedin committee of the K&itangata Relief Faad has decided that the ataount required for the relief of the sufferers having been exceeded by £5000—£15,000 having been the handsome response made by the people of New Zealand to their charitable feelings, and £10,000 bsiug sufficient—the balance (£5000) should be invested to form a national fund for relief in any futnre case of a similar kind. It will be remembered that the explosion of fire-damp in the Kaitanaata coal mine was attended with the most disastrous results ; killing a large number of the miners, and leaving widows and orphans without any means of present or future subsistence. For adopting the suggestion offered by our Mayor, the Dunedin committee is taken soundly to task by the Southland Times and the Dunedin Evening Star. The language used by the latter ia such as could hardly be justified under any circumstances. It refers to the reasons given by the committee for the application of the balance of the fund as " just of the same nature that every embezzler and thief brought before our Courts puts forward in excuse for his crime, they are hollow and false every ene of them, the proposed action ia a robbery and nothing else." Robbery ? How ! Has the Star some information which it has not disclosed. If so, then it is unjust to the Dunedin committee and to the subscribers that the justification for these comments has not been made public. It is too much, however, to ask the subscribers to the fund to believe that the committee is putting the money in its own pocket, and nothing short of that would justify the ontregeonß comments that have been made. Had the committee, through want of judgment taken a wrong step, the unselfishness of its conduct and the excellence of its intentions should have protected it from such unseemly violence of language. But it has done nothing of the kind. It has cheerfully accepted a suggestion which recommends itself to all reasonable minds, for being prepared for contingent disasters by finding money in excess of the amount which it was stated at the outset would be required to meet the original calamity. That is the bead and front of its offending. If persons giving their disinterested services in the cause of charity are to be thus viruUntly aspersed we may see this result—that they will abstain from taking a position which entails upon them so unworty a requital.