MR. ROLLESTON IN TROUBLE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 682, 30 July 1870, Page 2

MR. ROLLESTON IN TROUBLE.

His Honor the Superintendent has been indulging in the fashionable habit of abusing the newspapers, or rather "the miserable penny papers." The Wellington Evening Post takes up the cudgels, and replies in the following plain spoken terms. We have hitherto rather patronised Mr Rolleston, esteeming him an honeßt man enough — straightforward too, having a general idea of progressive measures, and desirous of social reform, but withal a little thickheaded. Conscientious he is, no one can deny, but his conscience is an awfully stupid one. He has never been a shifty individual, but has clung to his political ideas with most unswerving pertinacity ; though those ideas have generally been in such a crude shape that no one could tell exactly what they were ; they might mean anything according as they were looked at ; and he had a rather sulky habit of retiring into " Caves " and other obscure places when he found he could not have things all hi 9 own way. We had on one occasion to chastise him for some rather calumnious expressions he made use of in reference to the North Island " trading ia war ; "but we magnanimously forgave him, putting his offence down to the stupid conscience he is troubled with. However, it seems our leniency has been thrown away, and in return for it he has taken upon himself to abuse ns. The other evening in the House, he said that the scarcity of employment for schoolmasters in the colony had had the effect of driving the pedagogues to seek a living by " scribbling for those miserable penny papers." Now we are aware that in his " own country," the paper which claims the foremost position on the strength of its being a "three penny paper," will none of Mr Rolleßton, and the "penny paper" which has hitherto supported him has also given him up, and consequently he is perhaps somewhat wroth; but all that furnishes no excuse for his scolding "penny papers" in general. Besides, " miserable" as he pretends to consider them, those papers have become an institution in New Zealand, and are fast working greater reforms and diffusing more intelligence than all the half-digested schemes which have been Blowly groping their way to the light through the muddy brain of their calumniator. They are quite proof against would-be lofty sneers from such a quarter. As we said before, we have patronised Mr Rolleston not so much for what he is, as for what we had hopes he might have been, bat evidently he is a mistake, and we wash oui hands of him.