Untitled

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 328, 12 May 1877, Page 2

The statements ma le by Mr. Lemon at the meeting of the Harbour Board yesterday, in reference to the conduct of one of its members, and which were reported in full in our last issue, are of so serious a nature as to call for a full and searching investigation. If the statements made tire correct —and we have every reason to believe they arc, for Mr. Lkaion would scarcely have dared to say what he did without having good grounds for so doing —the Board should at once take steps to have the matter laid before the public in all its bearings. That one member of the Board should purposely spread vile and slanderous rumors abroad with reference to other members of that boJy, is a proceeding which should not for one moment be tolerated. It is not only the members whose fair fame is called into question that suffer, but the whole Board is •' lowered in the estimation of the public. The consequence of doubts being aroused as to the honesty and integrity of me libers of a public body must, as a natural sequence, damage that body very materially, lii the case of a corporate body ' entrusted with the power of borrowing and ] expending a large amount of money, this |

must be a state of things far too serious to allow to pass unnoticed. The Harbour Board is just one of those bodies which would be likely to suffer to a very great extent were there a lack of the most implicit public confidence in the purity of the motives of its members. We do not -think that, as a general rule, the public will believe the slanderous report so busily promulgated by the member in question, to the effect that several members are interested in the contracts for the works now in course of construction. The members of the Board are gentlemen whose public and private characters are too well known to the general public to allow of them entertaining the notion for one moment. But it must not be denied that there are everywhere people to be found willing to seize with avidity upon anything likely to damage the reputation of men placed in high or responsible positions. For this reason it is necessary that the Board should take action in the matter, and place beyond the possibility of a doubt the untruthfulness of the report circulated. The Harbour Board, like Ciesar's wife, should be above suspicion. That they are so, we firmly believe; and we therefore urge upon them to expose fully and unreservedly the name of the offender and the nature of the offence.