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Otago Daily Times, Issue 3634, 27 September 1873, Page 2

Persons who are in the habit of penning, printing, or circulating slanderous statements, either about persons or public institutions, without troubling themselves to enquire as to their having the slightest foundation in fact, would do well, inselecting the language they employ, to leave a considerable margin for the inevitable amount of exaggeration that will be sure to accompany every successive repetition of them. It will be remembered that a short time ago a statement, was published in Dunedin that in our local Hospital " a man was sent into the deadhouse somewhat sooner than he ought." In the Tuapeka Times of the 18th instant, the Dunedin "own correspondent" of that journal enlightens the readers of it by putting it thus :—"That a man who had been certified as dead, and was about to be screwed down in his coffin, had risen from his unpleasant resting-place, and intimated his intention of remaining a little longer on earth." Hence it will be seen that this gross libel, simply in travelling from this to Tuapeka, adds to being "sent to the dead-house" the very sensational items of the man having, been arrayed with the habiliments of death, laid out in his coffin, what few friends the poor fellow had were about to take their final leave of him, and the undertaker standing ready to screw him down, and to take him away. For.nothing less than all this could possibly he implied by his being "certified as dead," and "about to be screwed down in his coffin." If such an exaggeration takes place in the mere transmission of the libel from this to Tuapeka, what possible form may we not expect it to assume by the time it has had an opportunity of "going the rounds" for a few weeks longer? We fully expect it will then turn up as a remarkable instance of "A Poor Hospital Patient Buried Alive!" with a full detail of all the various adjuncts. Among which we shall in all pro. bability have the poor man's "knocking at the coffin-lid with loud and sepulchral knocks, which only just in time scared the inhuman monsters in the horrible act of closing him up in his living tomb." Seriously, now that the slander has been denied on authority which none will dispute, and admitted indeed by those who first put it into circulation, it should surely be regarded as incumbent on all those who have aided in its dissemination throughout the Colony, to see to it that the denial is as extensively circulated by them as was the libel. The interests of a very valuable institution—indeed, in some sense, the reputation of the Province itself—demands that they should do so. We shall be glad to observe that they have adopted this course.

jlt is time to take notice of the New Zealand Tablet, several numbers of which we have before us. With the doctrines which this paper advocates we have no I sympathy whatsoever, nor have we any j call to criticise them. But such views exist, and must find expression. We are bound in honesty to say that they could not be put in less objectionable form than here. The original matter is evidently the work of gentlemen—and educated gentlemen. They take their point of view on many subjects—we may say most—the opposite of our own, but there is a remarkable absence of the blackguardism which ordinarily characterises the religious Press. In France, M. Veuillot attained, by his scandalous virulence, an unenviable notoriety, while fighting on the same side. In England, the Record and some of the Ritualist prints have not been less successful. In New Zealand, Protestant journalism has hitherto been feeble and silly, or feeble and dry, but not vicious. With the single exception of the Guardian, we are acquainted with no religious paper at Home which is not in flagrant opposition to the moral teaching of the New Testament. The readers of the sheet before us are most likely to be mainly Irish, and it would not have been difficult to ensure it a popularity, at least ephemeral, by savagely attacking everything English. Its circulation will be of course chiefly among Catholics, and nothing could be easier than to please the less educated of- that creed, by wholesale condemnation of every Protestant. We find nothing of this kind. Protestant statesmen are freely commended, and it is evtn admitted, and that in a rather bitter article, directed, however, mainly against ourselves—the only' bitter paper we have noticed— that the fundamental doctrine of Christianity is common to the Church of England and the Church of Konie. The articles on the great High School question—Professor v. Rector—are really models. The extreme caution and courtesy with which the question is discussed, the total absence of personal blame, the deftness with which the system, not the men, is convicted of •the failure of that institution, is, in a religious newspaper, pastpraise. Oneblot we must, however, point out —the advocacy of the formation of aCatholic party in politics. In England, where Church and State are so mixed, there may be some apology for such a. state of things. Jn this Colony, where they are so entirely divorced, there, can be none. A religious party, prepared to cast its vote as one man in favour of the statesman who promises it most, is essentially immoral. H the Catholics make Protestants feel that they hold what they regard the interests of their denomittition as in their eyes superior to all' considerations of the common good, they j must expect to meet with opposition of \ the same description. They may retain a | few representatives on the goldfields, but J elsewhere Catholics, and even those who ' demand fair play for Catholics, will be excluded. If Catholics will set themselves to contend with the rest of their fellow countrymen on these terms, they must and will be defeated. We doubt exceedingly whether the Irish Vote in the British Parliament has not very much injured the Catholic Cause. The "Pope's Brass Band," as it was called, certainly delayed the disestablishment of the Irish Church. Many fairminded men, who fully recognised the injustice of forcing Ireland to maintain a faith that was not hers, were certainly repelled by seeing a compact body of members, who systematically subordinated Imperial interests to ecclesiastical mandates ; who were prepared to vote for Whig or Tory, no matter what policy Whig or Tory advocated, so long as they promised enough. It was pitiable to see the Great Church, to which we all owe our Christianity and our civilisation, sinking to the level of the united publicans, who boast that they can at any moment, and in nine boroughs out of ten, retnrn any member, be he Whig or Tory, who is " sound upon beer," against any candidate who would in anyway interfere with the Briton's rights to all facilities and temptations in the way of getting drunk. But, this apart, we are bound to say that' as the nineteenth century Christian's duty is manifestly to detest afl who are not of

his particular "doxy," that duty cannot be put in a more amiable form than that in which the Tablet puts it. We Jiave also to thank that paper for putting it in good and readable English.'