THE Poverty Bay Independent. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Tuesday, November 24, 1885.

Poverty Bay Independent, Volume I, Issue 78, 24 November 1885, Page 2

THE Poverty Bay Independent. Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Tuesday, November 24, 1885.

It would appear from what has transpired at Wellington during the past week that other localities besides our own has been suffering somewhat from a want of wholesome literary pabulum. and that newswriters have been driven to exercise their pens more with regard to filling up space than with respect to quality or truth. Even the Wellington Post seems to have been suffering from this epidemic, when it suddenly “ struck a patch ” on hearing of the new Ministerial appointment which has just been made in connection with the agricultural branch of the Crown Lands Department. The nominee happened to be named Reeves, and the perspicacious Post at once jumped at the conclusion that it was the son of the Hon. Mr Reeves, M.L.C. Immediately a “ howl" of jobbery, corruption, and political influence was raised, and the jackal imitators took up the cry and passed it along the wires to their local parrots, who repeated it with varying additions and adornments. But, alas for the reputation of the Opposition cock and its bantam imitators, it turned out that the Mr Reeves of the appointment and the gentleman who had been made the object of their tender solicitude were two totally different individuals, and that instead of being a briefless lawyer and a “ dabbler” in journalism the appointment has been conferred on a gentleman who is not alone an agricultural chemist but also possesses special qualificationsj/or the position to which he has been appointed. He has already furnished the Government with some valuable reports, and the appointment has been made solely in the interests of the public service, and is but the carrying out of the views which the Minister of Lands has held since the commencement of his tenure of office. The following letter will fully explain the ludicrous “ mare’s nest”:— Sir.—l have read with gome amusement two leading articles which you have been lately pleased to devote to my cousin, Mr Walter Reeves, and myself. In my cousin’s appointment to a post in the Civil' Service, I have but a few words to say, which are these : —Mr Walter Reeves has for eleven years been a hard-working farmer, at first in Englaßl. but chiefly in the North and South Islands of New Zealand. To this lengthy and variod experience he adds not only high character, but an ability to which many friends and neighbours in Hawke’s Bay and South Canterbury could, and if necessary would, speak- Neither financially nor in any other respect has he been a failure. So far from his position tn the Civil Service being too good for him, I can only regret that he sees fit to enter about the worst paid, worst abused, most precarious services in the universe. However, that is his affair. To admit, as you seem to argue, that a Minister has no right to take the chance of securing a valuable servant because he happens to be the nephew of a political friend, would add a good deal to the difficulties of public administration. In most civilised countries it is thought sufficient if the mai appointed is thoroughly fit for his work, and has not been unfairly lifted over the heads of better man.

As regards myself, your blunder in taking me for the man appointed requires of course no reply but the laugh to which I am sure you will admit my right. But you did not confine yourself to this one statement about me. You favoured Wellington with a little pen-and-ink sketch of myself, not unkindly

drawn perhaps, but still almost as income as your great discovery. You describe mo as a kind of amiable dilettante, a solicitor by profession but not by practice, and as a young, man who had “ dabbled a little" in journalism This is hardly just. It is quite true that my name is on the rolls of the Supreme Court as a solicitor, and that I have now little other claim to be called a lawyer. But I did not leave that honourable profession to idle or to "dabble" in anything. Journalism, as you know, is not an occupation for dabblers or dilettanti. If a preparation commencing in boyhood ; if years of incessant study, literary and political; if the writing of many hundred articles, critiques, reports, end letters; if to edit one newspaper and write regularly for two others; if to share in the general management of the Lyttelton Times Company’s aft’aiiß; if these things constitute "dabbling" in journalism, then, sir, I am a dabbler. I make no further comment on your sketch, because I have no doubt you intended it to be rather complimentary than otherwise, But your compliment might easily do me no little injury, and I think I am entitled to object to be exhibited to the public as a mild type of the educated loafer. — I am, &c., W. P. Reeves.

[Nothing could be further from our intention than to imply that Mr W. P. Reeves was either “an amiable dilettante ’’ or " a mild type of the educated loafer." On the contrary, we know him to be a very energetic, able, and hard working young man. Our first article was penned under the belief that, having studied for the legal profession, and for a time practised it, he had devoted himself to literary work, and then abandoned that in turn to seek Civil Service employment. In the latter supposition we proved mistaken, and we are glad of it, for Mr Reeves is too good a journalist to be lost in a service which he very justly characterises as the worse-paid, worstabused, and most precarious in the world. As to Mr Walter Reeves, we are not acquainted with his merits or qualifications, and our remarks relative to his appointment have no personal application. What we have objected to throughout is the creation of what, we d .e.n an entirely unnecessary office, and the appointment thereto of a gentleman who, under the circumstances, may not unfairly he supposed to owe his billet rather to political influence thon to any urgent necessity for adding him to the Civil Service.—■'Ed. E.P.j

It will be seen by the editorial note that the Post has made the amende honorable by a reluctant acknowledgment of its error, and a son.ewhat sycophantic reference to the abilities of the very gentleman whom it had sought to traduce and ridicule a few days previous. But not so the local parrots, who, w-hile evincing the utmost anxiety to join in and perpetuate any “ howl ” against the present Ministry, have not the candour or honesty of their leader in acknowledging an enor. As an instance of this we have but to point to the prefatory remarks attached to the reprint of the above! etter which appeared in our contemporary of Saturday and the omission of the postcript. How frequently the progeny of a bad stock inherits all the evil characteristics of a sire without one vestige of those redeeming traits which go a long way towards qualifying and counterbalancing the evil.