ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE. To the Editor of the "New Zealand Spectator." Wellington, May 3, 1852.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 705, 5 May 1852, Page 2

ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE. To the Editor of the " New Zealand Spectator." Wellington, May 3, 1852.

Sir, — You so seldom condescend to notice the effusions of your contemporary that I must beg the indulgence of a spare corner in your columns to direct attention to an article on the Liberty of the Press, in last Wednesday's Independent, which otherwise might pass unnoticed, and that would be a pity, since it would be difficult to find so much nonsense within so small a compass even in the columns of the Independent, and that you will admit is saying a good deal. The writer talks of freedom and destiny as if he were on excellent terms with them, raves about his Anglo-Saxon forefathers and " Norman brute force ruthlessly sweeping from the British Isles almost every vestige of national liberty" — with different degrees of impossibility of concepti >n — in short, Sir, he appears in a fine phrenzy rolling, just as might be expected of a Member of the Bowie Knife Association who, to use his own choice phrase, had "been standing glasses round" all the evening. But this which I have given as a taste of his quality, a sample of the nonsense to which I refer, is nothing to the climax, where working himself up so as to use to the level of his theme, he expatiates on the influence exerted by the Press " over the destinies of the human race, which has been increasing continually without having yet reached the calumniating point /" In common with most of the settlers 1 believe that the Independent has not only reached the calumniating point, but is notorious among the journals that issue from the Australian Press for gross scurrility, personal abuse, and calumnies of every kind and degree. I am Sir, your obedient servant, Common Sense.