A DISGRACE TO JOURNALISM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 1, 26 April 1889, Page 31

A DISGRACE TO JOURNALISM.

(Pall Mali Gazette, February 28.)

Thb Time* this morning publishes as its first leading article what Printing Honse-equare regards as an appropriate and adequate acknowledgment of the cruel wrongs which it has done to Mr. Parnell. It begins its leadiog article by reproducing the words of the AttorneyGeneral yesterday, including bis statement that their feeling of sincere regret •■ which most truly exists " will, at the proper time, be more fully expressed by themselves The following is the " more full " expression of regret which appears in the Time* to-day :— 11 We desire to endorse and appropriate every word cf the foregoing statement. It is our wish, as it is our duty, to give expression to that feeling of sincere regret to which the Attorney-General referred It was obvious that, after Pigott, on his own showing, had proved himself to be a person utterly unworthy of credit, and after he had made two confessions varying in detail, but both admitting that the letters which he produced were tainted with forgery, our duty was unreservedly to withdraw these letters from the consideration of the judges. Moreover, Mr. Parnell having in the witness-box stated that the letters attributed to him were forgeries, we accept in every respect the truth of that statement. In these circumstances, we deem it right to express our regret most fully and sincerely at having been induced to publish the letters in question as Mr. Parnell's, or to use them in evidence against him. This expression of regret, we need hardly say, includes also the letters falsely attributed to Mr. Egan Mr Davitt and Mr. O'Kelly. It is clear now that Pigott was guilty of a ercsa and disgraceful fraud when he produced the documents which reached our hands. Into the circumstances under which we received and published them it is scarcely fitting we should enter. Nor shall we now iefer to the groundß, apart from Pigott's testimony, on which we conwdered onreelves to be justified in dealing with these letters as genuine documents. To do so would be to touch upon controversial matter which cannot for the present be properly dealt with in these columns. We are bound, however, to point out that though Picott waß the source from which the letters came, and though they were thus contaminated by their origin, he was not the person with whom we communicated, ani who placed the documents in our hands Moreover, we must add that we firmly believed the letters to be genuine until the disclosures made by Pigott in the cours' of his cross-examination.

" We heard on Tuesday of ' a conspiracy behind Pigott and Houston, but it must be evident to all reasonable persons that, if a conspiracy existed, the Times was victimised by it, and not a oarty to it. Errors of judgment may have been committed, and for them the penalty must be paid. What we have done, it must be clearly understood, has been done by us in the public interest alone. It has been done, moreover, altogether of our own motion and upon our own responsibility. We regarded the undertaking on whish we entered as one of national importance, but we must enter an emphatic protest against attempts to make any statesmen or any political party conjointly responsible with us for acts which were exclusively our own We may point out, further, that it ia absurd to take us to task for not navinp at once abandoned the portion of the case dependent upon the letteie at an earlier stage of Pigott's examination. We were responsibly advised that it waß not within our right or power to express any opinion on the evidence of a witness still under examination, and could not offer any view of our cwn until that witness's cross-examination was concluded. As soon as the incidents affectiDg Pigott s flight had been inquired into, our counsel at once asked for an adjournment for the purpose of considering the most proper form in *hich to present our withdrawal of the letters from the consideration of the Commission. Tbis withdrawal, of course, refers exclusively to the letters obtained from Pigott, and not to the other portion of the case embraced in the '-charges and allegations," which still remain tbe subject of judicial inquiry. Our desire is simply to express deep regret foi the error into which we were led, and to withdraw unreservedly those parts of our original s'ntementP which, we cannot Doncatly continue to maintain."