THE " NOTHING EXTENUATE; OR SET DOWN AUGHT IN MALICE." SATURDAY MORNING, 17th OCTOBER.

Wellington Independent, Volume XVIII, Issue 1971, 17 October 1863, Page 2

THE " NOTHING EXTENUATE; OR SET DOWN AUGHT IN MALICE." SATURDAY MORNING, 17th OCTOBER.

THE WAITARA. MYSTERY REVEALED On the eleventh day of May in the present year the Waitara was abandoned by formal proclamation owing to certain "circumstances" which had come to light connected with its purchase. What were these " circumstances ?" That was the question asked on every side — a question which up to the present moment has remained unanswered but which will no longer be so. We did not expect to be put in possession of the papers referring to this affair until after thfi Assembly had met, but through the courtesy of the Hon. W. B. D. Mantell, to whom we feel deeply indebted, we have been enabled to anticipate that period, and publish them now. So important do we consider this information that we have not hesitated to devote a sheet and a supplement of our present issue almost entirely to its publication. We do not to-day intend to notice these important documents, further than to point out how unjust a pretext that unfortunate purchase realiy was, on which to make war. If a Ministry who had been opposed to the war had been in power last May, when the Waitara was abandoned as having been unjustly taken possession of ; men might have read these documents with suspicion ; but remembering that Messrs Domett and Bell were among the most strenuous supporters of the justice of that purchase and war, and that Governor Browne's voluminous " notes" in reply to Sir William Martin's pamphlet were from Mr Bell's pen, men muste very where believe that only the stern logic of facts could have prevailed upon them to prepare and deliberately express in the proclamation they have handed to j His Excellency, that it was so abandoned by the advice they felt it their imperative duty to give.