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Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1322, 30 May 1882, Page 2

Last nigh', we, as we had done on several previous occasions, commented upon the want of promptitude displayed by Reuter in sending by cable items of exceeding interest to this colony. The subject of our last night's complaint was Heater's neglect to send information in reference to the Dunedin and her cirgo of frozen meat till she had been in London over a week. Our local contemporary makes remarks in defence of this agency which are obviously called forth by our expressions of dissatisfaction. Be says that "Renter . . . has probably acted with ciirum*per(<on in not advising before the actual facts had fcesn ascertained" Fudge ! It is inattention and not circumspection that is the matter with Heater. Did he not serve the colony just as badly over the reports of the prices of grain at Home by sending the highest ruling for Australian and the lowest rating for New Zealand ? Now he sends us news of' the arrival of a vessel when wch-d received the information a week before, through another source, and after her cargo had been sold, fteutcr must be a bloated Conservative. Conservatives are given to tardiness. Wc never knew until now that that characteristic i* due to circumspection. It now becomes a question with us as to whether circumspection is not, after all, a moat undesirable attribute. Car contemporary, too, is an intc mittcnt Conservative. He is so careful to be circumspect that he never—well " hardly ever"— writes on anything till everybody knows all about it—knows that things are just opposite to whathesaystheyare. Thismayaeeount for the sympathy which he expresses for the circnmspcct Renter—one circumspect writer holds out the right hand of fellowship to the other circnmspcct Eenter [see German pronouncing dictionary for key to witticism]. " A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind." So wrote a philosopher; and our contemporary exhibits his highest virtue when he exemplifies the truth of this axiom. When in future cither our contemporary, or Renter, or any other Conservative, withholds the truth or tells a lib, we, at all events, will not forget that wc have been taught to attribute such eccentricities to a redundancy of circumspection.