Wellington Independent WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1871.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3346, 15 November 1871, Page 2

Wellington Independent WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1871.

The Telegraph Department of New Zealand has recently passed through an ordeal such as falls to the lot of few similar institutions in other countries, such, we venture to think, as very few would come out of unscathed. During the past twelve months the Department has been charged with malpractices and abuses of so heinous a nature as to be calculated, if proved, to destroy all public confidence in its trustworthiness or its usefulness. Gross partiality, habitual betrayal of secrets, falsehood, and theft have been amongst the charges levelled against it. Nor have any means that mischief and malice could invent beeu overlooked in fanning and circulating damaging statements. Newspapers in and out of the colony have been made the vehicle of scandalous attacks upon the Telegraph Department; accusations against it have been sedulously circulated in telegrams and correspondents' letters ; denunciations have been hurled upon it in editorial columns ; and even the Melbourne "Argus" and the " Sydney Morning Herald" — journals usually too well informed to be deceived — have been prostituted by own correspondents in New Zealand, and the editors of those journals beguiled into writing articles reflecting not only upon the honesty of the Telegraph Department of New Zealand, but upon the probity of the magisterial bench. Out of this ordeal the Telegraph Department has come without a blemish. It has triumphantly stood the crucial test of a rigid public investigation before a committee of the House of Representatives, whose decision is that it has been administered with perfect honesty, and that it is emi-

nently worthy of public confidence j That such a result should have been ! arrived at is a subject for general con j gratulation. Every true colonist has, or ought to have, a deep interest in maintaining our public institutions— and especially such an institution athe Telegraph Department— above evei. the faintest suspicion of corrupt administration. The report of the commit tee must, therefore, have been received with genuine satisfaction throughout the colony. Had there been any tangible ground for the inquiry the expense and loss of time ithos entailed would not have been so much a matter for regret. But unfortunately it has been shewn by the inquiry that from almost the outset of the charges being made, there was sufficient evidence before the principal accusers of the Government to compel any men, whose consciences were not warped by party bins and splenetic vindictiveness, to come forward and honestly apologise for ill-grounded suspicions, and for conclusions based upon the very lowest estimate of human nature. The " principal accuser " of the Government, and the person who is morally responsible for all the mischief and expense the unfounded charges have entailed is Mr George Burnett Barton, formerly editor of the " Otago Daily Times," and now a practising solicitor (and therefore a gentlemen by act of Parliament) at Queenstown, in the interiorofOiago. Thisgentlcman then, who seems to be afflicted with an inborn hatred and suspicion of Governments all and sundry, contrives to obtain the editorship of the •« Otago Daily Times." Ooncsiving some fancied hostility on the part of Mr Yogel, he sets to work to misuse the " Otago Daily Times" as a means of venting his personal spleen. Utterly deficient in any practical know • ledge of press telegraphy, he further conceives the brilliant notion of estab lishing a telegraph agency, and forthwith elects himself manager. His conduct in connection with this business is plainly told by Mr Reeves, one of the proprietors of the "Lyttelton Time 9." the leading newspaper in Canterbury. In his sworn evidence before the Committee, Mr Beeves says : —

" I would say, simply, I believed in dealing wibb Mr Barfcon I was dealing with a gentie. man accredited by the " Otago Daily Times" to act in the matter, but I do not think ho acled as a gentleman to me." And lie then goes on to explain that having for many months been in confidential correspondence with Mr Barton regarding a proposal to establish a Press Telegraphic Agency, and that having come to a business understanding on the faith of Mr Barton's plain dealing, Mr Barton broke faith with him, and secretly deceived him by making exclusive arrangements with the Canterbury "Press," a newspaper in opposition to the "Lyttelton Times." Says Mr Reeves in bis evidence when questioned by Mr Barton as to a conversation about the Canterbury "Press,"

"In talking over confidential business matters it is exceedingly probable I was foolish enough to say many things I should not have said if I had understood you as well as I do now. ... It never entered into my

mind to conceive that you would deceive me." So keenly did Mr Keeves feel the treachery of Mr Barton that lie made a personal complaint to the directors of the " Otago Daily Times" at Dunedin, who overruled Mr Barton's action, and effected a compromise by which the " Lytteltoti Times" was also admitted into the Association.

This was Mr Barton's conduct at the outset of forming his Press Association. We shall trace from the evidence his subsequent conduct at Wellington and Auckland.

Mr Thomas M'Kenzie, proprietor of the Wellington Independent, who also entered into negotiations with Mr Barton, with the view of connecting the Independent with the Press Association. He says : —

"Mr Barton wanted £150 a year from me to allow me to have the benefit of his telegrams. I said it was a large sum, but if he would show me what I could get for it, I would be willing to entertain it. After a long interview I agreed to give him £100 a year if he supplied me, but he backed out of tho office, wulked out backwards, and neither agreed nor disngreed with the terms. Ho then went away to Auckland. Ho did not give me an answer to my offer; A steamer going to Melbourne was at tho wharf at the time, and Mr Halcombe wrote to Mr Hutton of Melbourne to send the English news. If that had not been done I would not havo been able to engage a person to send the news from Melbourne in time. After an absence of about three weeks Mr Barton came back, and intimated that he had taken tho " Post " into the confederacy, and he declined us. He told Mr Halcombe, as the latter alterwards told me, we would bo obliged to come on our knees and take what terms he would offer. We did not disclose the arrangements made with Mr Hutton in Melbourne, but wo rather laughed to see how we should have been taken in if we had not made provision for getting the news. Tho first telegram we got was in August, and was much superior to that of the Press Association. Our telegram caused a great deal of annoyance, because the "Post" were led to suppose that they were to bo the exclusive parties to have the telegrams, and also to Mr Barton because he did not know how we got them."

In this evidence lies the whole gist of the explanation as to how Mr Barton blundered into charging the Telegraph Department and the Government with stealing his telegrams. We shall, however, refer to this subject further on. Let us now see what was the conduct of this Mr Barton in Auckland. Mr Barton's evidence as to his action with regard to the leading Auckland papers is flatly contradicted and conclusively disproved by Mr Yogel himself, who was the proprietor of the "Daily Southern Cross." Mr Barton comes down to Wellington after visiting Auckland, and endeavors to induce Mr "Yogel to believe that Mr Wilson, the proprietor of the other Auckland journal, had been very anxious to enter into an agreement to connect the " New Zealand Herald " with the Press Association, but that he (Mr Barton) remembering a pledge he had made to Mr Yogel, had declined entering into an agreement before seeing him. Mr Yogel, in his evidence before the committee, says : — " I pulled a letter out of my pocket, and said to Mr Barton, in a manner which I could

hardly help being offensive, " Your statement loes not tally with my information ; here is n nessage I have had from Mr Wilson to the •ffect— • Don't have anything to do with Mr Barton's arrangement.' "

It would be mere waste of lime to expose in detail the deception and the too transparent jugglery by which MiBarton endeavored to lure certain newspapers into joining the so-called Press Association, and ultimately succeeded admirably in deceiving and over-reach-ing himself. The disappointment that he had experienced at the outset, rankling in a mind peculiarly suspicious and prone to follow its own instincts, to think evil rather than good, and to seek for an explanation of everything that surpassed its own order of intelli gence by attributing baseness and dishonesty, produced its natural effect The Press Association, instead of becoming what it might have been, an impartial and efficient organisation from which both the press and the public would have derived benefit, sunk into an instrument of personal spleen and vindictiveness. And Mr Barton did not Jong waut for active and sympathising coadjutors. He found ready instruments in others like himself who had imaginary grievances against the Government, and who threw themselves heart and soul into his cause.

In a future article we propose to deal with the origin of the charges against the Government, and to show how they have been utterly disproved and dissipated by the evidence given before the committee.