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Oamaru Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 4952, 18 April 1891, Page 2

The Gumming scandal is, it appears, not to be liuslied up on account of the high position of some of the parties to the case. If the accused baronet be guilty, it is onlyright that he should be unveiled at whatever cost, and the man who, from individual considerations, allows a scoundrel to go unmasked is the worst of public foes. On the other hand, if Sir William Gumming be innocent of the ugly charge brought against him, no question of false sentiment should prevent even the highest in the land from testifying to that effect. The reputation of a man is surely of greater weight in the social balance than the temporary annoyance of even the heir to the throne. It is a pity that the Prince of Wales should ever have been mixed up in a scandal of the sort. It is human nature for those who are situated on the lower rungs of the ladder of social status to rejoice at the weaknesses of those who are over them. It consoles them in a way for their own social inferiority, not that there is much to choose between the prince and the pauper in a question of morality. We should all be perfect if we were neither men nor women, says a well-worn aphorism, and the great are only great to us because we grovel to them. Still, it behoves a man in the position of the Prince of Wales to be more than ordinarily careful- not to allow his name to be connected in any way with any scandal,

or to be associated with any character doubtful nature. The King, if he wiaK 1 win the respect, of the people, should'v! above reproach, unci the Heir App at • connection with the racecourse the green baize has, 011 more one occasion, been tho means of bri n • him into discredit with the genem) p„fe Her Majesty is alleged to have state') ij those who discovered the supposed choaj should have hushed it up rather than the Prince of Wales into a public but it is difficult to believe that her Mujt) intended seriously to advocate the of merely the outside of the platter. t? public washing of dirty linen is never agreeable duty, and when the linen is linen it becomes still more unfortunate'i* 1 rather than let this moral sore eontj m ,' c f 1 fester beneath the innuendoes and snspi c j 0 of the world at large, by all means let t? clear waters of investigation do their cleans, work. In its own interests Royalty demand a thorough sifting of the nj business, as any attempt t« suppre SJ ■! would do more to injure the monareliirlt system than if a charge of cheating sheeted home to the Prince himself.