Untitled

Otago Daily Times, Issue 3862, 3 July 1874, Page 2

We publish in another column a letter; from Mr Stoct: upon" the Bubject of thei exclusion of certain papere from the Athe-j nse'nm,Reading Room, andFthe>abolition! of the ; Free Table. .J[n answer, to the first; part of his letter, we may simply say-that-the-statement we made upon Wediiesdayj —that. the V Athenaeum Committed vhadi abolished the Free Table at the, urgent: request of a numerous body, of -the sub-ii acribers-^-seenVs to us jußtifiedV;by; tKei petition which he quotes, albeit/theword-i irig'of that petition was inexact and \yant-! ing in care. We have also understood I that very many requests have been/made)! to the members of Committee individually |l to the aame effect. This table refersj wel presume, to' the table1 upon which: ;thej papers objected to had been previously'; laid ; and the request that no papers or' pamphlets should be- laid on it' without; express sanction, .can; only mean that the; petitioners desired that for the future, no opportunity -should be afforded !to; members of placing papers on the tables of the Athenaeum without1 the sanction of the Committee. We think that Mr Stotjt is not treating us fairly when he says that " of couraa those who voted for the retention of those (i.e., the objected to) papers are impliedly accused of setting their face against the morality common to the civilized world," inasmuch as we expressly said :on Wednesday "We donot suppose that those who made' use of the table and deposited certain papers upon it month after month necessarily approved of all that those papers contained; on; the contrary, much that was written in them would, we are sure, meet with their most decided disapprobation." It is surely trying to raise the cry of persecution upon very poor grounds to introduce such an assumption. We altogether decline to enter upon the somewhat abstruse question of what morality is exactly. The world has pretty well agreed that it amounts to an immorality to talk in public about certain subjects. We believe that the majority of the members of the Athenaeum are pretty well of one mind about the matter, and that they do not care to see the Institution made the means of an offensive infraction of this unwritten law. It may be very easy to point out certain books or papers which offend this or that particular body, and to argue, with great consistency, that you must exclude all or none. As a matter of fact, the Athenaeum Committee has determined by its Monday's decision not to be so rigidly logical, but to exclude those papers only which all, or very nearly all, ihe subscribers will object to, as they fchink. We should be extremely sorry if the Committee were to make an Index Expurgatoriits, and exercise a censorship over the exact wording and precise sentiment of every passage and every paragraph in every book that came before them. We by no means hold the Committee responsible for all the views put forth in all the works in the Library. When, however, their attention is directed by petition to certain, papers or works,

and they are requested to withdraw them, we think they should take the matter into consideration, and if they hold the objection to be a good one, act upon the suggestion. If Mr Stout thinks that the six clergymen, sixteen office-bearers of churches, and twenty-eight unecclesiascical petitioners did not represent the opinion of the general public, he can bring the matter up at' the general meeting in January, and reverse the decision of Monday. We do not think that the subscribers desire anything like a liberty for anyone to put anything en the Athenaeum tables, and it follows, therefore, with admirable sequence, that someone must have power to reject something. Just what the Committee have done.