West Coast Times. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1867.

West Coast Times, Issue 636, 8 October 1867, Page 2

West Coast Times. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1867.

Me James Bhowxe lias made a charge on the public hustings against the members of the retiring Town Council of something tantamount to swindling the ratepayers, and he has deliberately accused the Auditors appointed to investigate and certify to the public accounts, of conniving- at the fraud by sending forth under their signature a garbled statement. If his words, spoken on Saturday last, mean anything — if they were not the mere vapid utterances of a demagogue, to whom nothing is amiss that savors of claptrap — they mean this — that the Mayor, Mr James Bonar, and his eight fellow Councillors, and Messrs Wilkinson and Homer are together a set of unmitigated rogues. It is of no use for one to say " I didn't mean it ; " whether he meant it or not, he said it, His words were — and we have the .shorthand notes of our reporter before vs — " Never was there a more garbled statement put forward than the auditors had put forward." Mr Browne tried to shelter himself W&? the subterfuge that he

did not intend his words to convey ichc impression that the two auditors were rogues, but tmly that the nine Councillors were. "I never . charged . the the auditors ... 1 never laid, it was the auditors. I said it was the .Council." Mr Browne may think that ho haft materially mitigated a foul calumny by the assertion that he only intended ,to charge nine persons with being swindlers instead of eleven. But is he to be allowed iv this way to condone his offence ? ; What does the charge preferred by this gentleman really amount to ? Let us check this indecent habit of vilifying public men by reducing language to its natural and proper significance. What does the charge of " garbling" the town accounts amount to in plain English ? We mean the conversational English of everyday life. We do not suppose that Mr Browne was guilty of any knowledge of the real compliment he was paying to the auditors, by the use of the word he intended t) be a reproach td them. His dictionary might have told him that to %i garble" was to sift the good from the bad — to present cleau accounts, with all the chaff and dirt winnowed out. It was not with any such intent that he said " Never was there a more* 'garbled' statement put forward than the auditors had put forward. By garbled, he meant fraudulent; and fraud we suppose means aggravated dishonesty. And the whole means either that the Councillors have put the public money into their own pockets, or that they have obliged their friends with it ; and that they have so adroitly cooked their accounts, as to induce honorable men. like Messrs Wilkinson and Homer to certify to their being true and honest. An accuser who fails to substantiate his accusation, and fails to prove that it was made in hunafides^ is a cahiminator. And that is just Mr Browne's position. He has protected himself probably from direct legal action for his slanders by declaring that he " did not mean " his accusation of fraud to apply to the only two individuals whom he pointedly referred to, when he said that '' there was never a more garbled statement put forward " than Messrs Wilkinson and Homer had put forward. He declared that it was not to any individual that he desired to bring home his charge of public theft, but to 'the' Council,' — to a Corporation without personality. As Jeremy Bentham says : " without a body to bo whipped or a soul to be saved." This may be a very safe and prudent line of conduct to adopt, but we very much question its morality. Vv r e consider that Mr Browne ought to bo publicly challenged to a proot of the reckless charges of dishonesty he has made ; that he ought not even to be heard at a public meeting, until he has purged himself of the suspicion of bearing .false witness against his neighbors. Ifyie can furnish no more justification of/his charges than ho has done, we cannot attach much weight to his accusations.