THE PRESS AND THE SLATTERYS. A BACK-HANDER' FROM THE PRESS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 12, 22 March 1900, Page 19

THE PRESS AND THE SLATTERYS.

A BACK-HANDER' FROM THE PRESS.

From the Christchurch Press of last Friday we extract the following significant paragraph :—: —

Abont 100 persons from Mr. Slattery's meeting visited the Press office last night, and announced themselves as a deputation to wait upon the editor. They were asked to select two or three to express their views, and the gentlemen appointed for this purpose said they had come to complain of the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Slattery's lectures were not reported, and that a resolution passed at a meeting was not printed by the papers. They declared in consequence that there was 'no liberty of the Press 'in Christchurch. The editor, in reply, said that the lectures, etc., were not reported because they were simply calculated to etir up religious bitterness and strife in the place, without any prospect of compensating benefit. If it was a question of an injustice being remedied or a political or social grievance being ventilated, the columns of the Press were always open ; but the paper could not lend itself to the publication of bitter personal attacks calculated to hurt the religious feelings of any section of the community. ' Liberty "of the Press,' when it Bimply meant liberty to attack other people, was in reality an abuse of that liberty. The deputation then retired.

We may Btate that the other Christchurch daily, the Lyttelton Times, absolutely and completely ignored the Slatterys and declined to give them so much as a paragraph or even a line of notice of any kind.

DENOUNCED IN DT7NEDIN.

We extract the following remarks from a slashing leading article in last Saturday's issue of the Ota/ja Liberal (Dunedin) :—: — Mere filth slinging at other creeds — and that is the Slatterys' trade — disgrac s priest or parson even more than the politician ; and that the man who, whether for love of money or sectarian hate, endeavours to set citizen agai'ist citizen in a peaceful coinniu i y is a worse enemy to bis country than an open foe like Joubert and Viljoen who fight us with Mauser rifles in their hands. The Slaiterys are coming to Dunedin to stir up the cissp >ol of sectarian bitterness and to make money by the abominable stench they raise Their gospel is the gospel of the almighty dollar. The Slatterys' appeal for the dollars is not made to the people who sit in fine drawing-rooms and sip tea out of fancy china cups. No, they appeal to the workinsr man and the working man's wife and the working girl at a shilling a head in return for so much sensational indecency. In other words, they are coining to Dunedin to set working people of one creed against working people of another creed, and to make their foolish dupes — or as many of them as they can find — pay them well for their dirty work. And when they've gathered in the shillings, the circus will move on to the next town. But the wall of stench raised by those vagrant strangers will remain behind, separating worker from worker and creating distrust and ill feeling in a city where all have hitherto lived in peace and harmony.

' We object to the persecution, misrepresentation, or abuse of people of any creed, be they Mahotnedan, Jew. Christian, or A^uostic. And in this new country we emphatically do not want the religious rancour and hatred that have proved such a cur-e to the old world. And, therefore, we don't want these Slattery strangers and their wretched trade in our midst. They belong: to a bad class, and their evil fame has preceded them here. Their outrageous handbills have been distributed, and their disgusting sectarian exaggerations delivered elsewhere, and have invariably given rise — as they were plainly intended — to much bad feeling, and even produced serious rioting in America, England, Scotland, and at Maitland and other places in Australia. It is Slattery's misfortune — and more probably his fault — th-it he is unable to substantiate the story of his " conversion " from Romanism by so much as a scrap of evidence beyond his own unsupported word. On the other hand, there is against him a mass of direct and overwhelming evidence which seriously affects his personal character and veracity. Neither he nor his wife has ever seriously called that evidence into question, and yet it is evidence that no man or woman with a reputation to lose can afford to ignore ' The editor then proceeds to summari&e the evidence which has been brought forward by us against the Blatteryo. He concludes hia article as follows :—: — 1 The position of the Slattery a is just this : that a strong case has been made against their bona fides. But even if the Slatterys are what they pretend to be, we should still feel ourselves bound to warn our readers against giving them either their sympathies or % their shillings for the reasons already stated by us. We have directed attention to the bad faith of these religious strife-raisers from a strong sense of our publio duty to the people of Otago. The Slatterys deserve neither credence nor support, and their wretched Bhow should be thunned by everybody who has honesty enough to hate religious shams, and sufficient patriotism to object to two total strangers who are coming to our midst to foment dissensions among the people for the sake of pelf.'