THE ETHICS OF CONTROVEBSY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15736, 12 April 1913, Page 8

THE ETHICS OF CONTROVEBSY.

The controversial methods of Mr MacManus cannot be regarded as very admirable. Challenged with respect to the accuracy of certain statements he mado in a letter that was published in the Otago Daily Times a few days ago, the object of which was to show that tho aggregation of land is going on in the dominion, he coolly informs us this morning that he took his figures from tho New Zealand Times and that we should settle the question of their accuracy with that paper. Mt MacManus views his responsibility as a controversialist very lightly. When he used these figures lie gave no indication of the source from which he had secured them. He submitted them, however, with, an air of authority thai suggested that they were unimpeachable. And he made them his own. Having done so, it is Ms duty to support if he can and not to throw the onus on a northern paper of showing that they are reliable. If he had not intended to shoulder the personal responsibility for tho statements he made—statements, it should be said, that chiefly involve the inferences that are to be drawn from the official tables—he should have been more guarded in what he wrote and he should, in the first instance, have acknowledged' the source upon which he Teliedr By his assumption of an air of authority and by the suggestion conveyed in his letter that his figures were incontrovertible, he accepted an onus of wnich he cannot, if he wishes the public to consider him a fair controversialist, now airily divest himself. It is to be regretted that Mr MacManus has not in the past found himself able to support statements which were founded ' by him upon what he has Tcad in tho newspapers. His unfortunate experience does not seem to have taught him that he should be more careful in what he says. We are bound to add that we have no recollection of his having ever quoted figures from the Otago Daily Times that were conclusively proved by the Opposition press to be erroneous. It is certain, that he has never applied to, this office for the verification of any figures which, quoted by him from the Otago Daily Times, have been disputed. If he had done so he would have found that he was not so conclusively in error as ho allowed himself to be persuaded he was. Jlost probably, however, the incident of his quotation of figures from this paper that were subsequently refuted exists only in his imagination.