"WELLINGTON.

Otago Witness, Issue 43, 13 March 1852, Page 3

"WELLINGTON.

(From the Spectator.) The last number of the Otago Witness, Jan. 31, received by the Henrietta, is as dull and uninteresting as any o( the previous numbers of that Journal, and fully sustains the character for imbecility which, under its present management, it has obtained both in England and the adjacent colonies. Nor should we have noticed it but for a reference made to ourselves, wherein the Witness, talking of morality, quotes Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield— an excellent authority, it must be confessed, on such subjects — and then says, — Indeed this view of Government patronage is strongly borne out by the argument in the Spectator — the Government organ— in the defence of a late appointment to an office in this settlement. - That paper does not defend the individual whose character has been attacked ; it does deny the charges ; but justifies the appointment on the ground that His Excellency had reinstated a gentleman in the Commission of the Peace, whose character, as it affirms, wouid not bear inspection, &c. We must give credit to the writer of the passage above quoted — generally a dull dog — for some ingenuity in putting together a paragraph in which he has drawn so largely on his imagination for his facts, and in which there is not a particle of truth. The Spectator is not the Government organ, nor is the argument of the Spectator such as is described by the writer in the Witness. If that worthy wishes to inform his readers of our opinions, let him reprint — nnt TYiisreTirPSPTit — what- w havp snirl — which it 19

very clear, he is too dull to understand. In the article he refers to, in which we noticed an unprincipled and unjustifiable attack in the Independent on private character, we distinctly stated we should not condescend to vindicate the person thus unjustly assailed, because the attacking of private characters on the plea of discussing political questions, such as that pursued by the writer in the Independent, of gratifying private vindictiveness and spite under an affected regard for public morality was so utterly indefensible, as to expose the person guilty of such conduct to the just indignation of the community. We also in a few words shewed that, according to the trite proverb, those who live in glass houses should not be quite so ready to throw stones at their neighbours, and that the writer in the Independent was, from personal considerations, of all others least qualified to act the part of public censor. It is strange that the patriots par excellence of these Constitutional Associations appear to think they improve their own characters by trying to damage their neighbour's reputation, and we shall not be at all surprised to learn (it would be so Constitutional) that the noisiest agitators at Dunedin have been applicants for government appointments, and that disappointment has given additional ardour to their patriotism. Neither would it excite surprise if we were to hear that the good folks of Otago should at last come to consider it a lesser evil to be without a newspaper in their settlement, than to have one which so entirely misrepresents their opinions, and should refuse any longer to tolerate the Witness, which has become merely a vehicle for gratifying the personal animosity of the clique into whose hands it has fallen.