The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. TUESDAY, JANUARY 7, 1868.

Westport Times, Volume 1, Issue 136, 7 January 1868, Page 2

The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. TUESDAY, JANUARY 7, 1868.

It is not often that we descend to notice the lucubrations of that " lesser light" that illuminates the evening studies of Westport citizens, for the simple -reason that by so doing we should .either be repeating ourselves, or, as our correspondent of yesterday pointed out, be commenting on ideas unblushinglv plagarised from other journals. But in the issue of yesterday evening, he has become so irate at the exposure of his .barefaced

literary fraud, that, being utterly unable to reply to it, or to find a plausible excuse for it, he launches put into a tirade of vulgar abuse upon another and a totally different matter. This we should be quite prepared to treat with the measure of contempt, usually accorded to such productions ; but inasmuch as we are roundly accused of" dissimulation and duplicity by which a large section of the community have been subjected to considerable loss, inconvenience, and annoyance," it becomes a question of commercial probity, which we are bound to notice.

The statement that we published a certain paragraph on the 10th Dec, happens, accidentally to be true; the West Coast Times, of a day or two preceding, from which it was copied, in perfectly good faith and with a justifiable confidence on the reliability of its information, as being the leading organ of the new capital of Westland, is a paper that may be easily obtained, and any one interested may as easily satisfy themselves whether we have mis-quoted the paragraph by one word. Some time afterwards, the West Coast Times had reason to think that its information had been incorrect as to the power of the Judge under the new Act to appoint more than one Gazette for each judicial district. As soon as a copy of the journal reached Westport, the paragraph was extracted and dilated on, so that all might know that a doubt existed on the subject, and every pains taken to ascertain from official sources the real facts of the case. So the matter remained until the Provincial Qrazette of the 20th December arrived, by which it was shown that the West Coast Times had made a mistake, and we had unwittingly followed it. " This is the very head and front of our offending ;" but as a minor offence we do plead guilty to having sent in the accounts for advertisements to those legal gentlemen who sent advertisements for insertion. This seems to be the onus of the crime in the eyes of the said legal gentlemen as of their evening organ; but we are prepared to contend that it was a natural sequence to the fact of their haying forwarded certain documents for insertion in the paper, and for which doubtless their clients will be duly charged. For any public inconvenience sustained in consequence of a statement by another journal we are duly sorry, but we cannot profess penitence for having asked in the regular way for money actually due. Neither can we admit that we sought to "get out of all blame by ' cowardly' casting the onus on the B-estCoaxt Times" because in the first place that would he Evening Star English, which is anything but the English of Lindley Murray, and because in the second place there was no blame whatever attributable to us for faithfully copying what had the air # of an official announcement. On tb*e other hand, we willingly plead guilty to the charge that had there been "no pecuniary interest attached to the appointment," we might not have been very eager to secure it. Probably our contemporary would not be very eager either. With regard to what might be a pickpocket's excuse in certain cases, he probably knows better than we do ; and so he may perhaps know what a " blot of hereditary sin on our scutcheons " means. We humbly confess our own ignorance, and quietly wait for our promised humiliation.