The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Tuesday, June 4, 1889. A SLANDEROUS PRINT.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 307, 4 June 1889, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Tuesday, June 4, 1889. A SLANDEROUS PRINT.

Be juat and fear not; Lot all the ends thou aim’at at be thy country’s, Thy God’s, and truth's,

The inner foes of New Zealand—those people who are always defaming the country—are responsible for the creation of a most hostile body in a city where the largest amount of injury can be done, because there we are least able to defend ourselves. Cable messages a short time ago informed us that the Financial News had made a bitter attack on New Zealand, the strictures being especially severe on the value of the harbor bonds. The article was either a wicked attempt to ‘‘bear” New Zealand securities, or else the result of an ignorance which would be inexcusable in any but the contributors to a wretched sheet which is the organ of a gang of stock-jobbers. The article alluded to appeared on the first of April, which is considered a very appropriate date, only that it is generally noted for harmless buffoonery instead of malicious attempts to injure the prospects of a country, so that individuals may reap an ill-gotten reward for the evil that has been perpetrated. The News assails all the Harbor Boards of the colony, on the strength of a formal summary of their transactions and positions as embodied in a Parliamentary return. It professes to have made endeavors to obtain copies of the balance sheets, but having failed to do so, insinuates that such statements have not been prepared. The News then confounds capital with revenue, and treats expenditure out of the former, on permanent works, as an annual charge to be set against the latter. A child in finance could see that this system of reckoning is nothing short of an absurdity. The Wellington Harbor Board is regarded as one of the soundest public bodies in the colony, and its management has been most careful in everything concerning its finances; but, though it certainly gets the credit of being the best of a bad lot, it becomes a monster of corruption when viewed through the spectacles of the News critic. The following extract will give an indea as to how the whole subject of harbors is treated: —“ Wild prodigality characterises the whole business; but some cases are worse than others. Only a single harbour in the one and twenty earned the cost of its maintenance, to say nothing of interest on the three millions of debt. It was Wellington, which, with an income of ,£36,907, spent on maintenance /ay,890. Pilotage, Harbourmasters’ Department, and office expenses absorbed fully /4000, and as much more remained for interest and sinking fund, which would be at least /io,ooo. Wellington makes the best show of solvency, though it is evidently outrunning the constable, too.” The same journal styles Christchurch a “ port,” and gives Greymouth and Nelson credit of being “ leading ports ” of New Zealand. It has now taken upon itself to bolster up the Midland Railway affair; the line, it is asserted by this specimen of unblushing falsehood, “ runs through the best settled part of the South Island ” I Figures are adduced in favor of the railway, which, if taken as a guide, would amount to an imposture upon the capitalist. Indeed, the News fairly equals its bitter attacks against New Zealand finance on the one side by its unreasoning and wrongful bolstering up of certain works on the other. If certain Boards had been singled out individually, and the weakness of their position exposed by a clever writer, a case could have been made out that would have been damaging to the general credit, but the weak points are all missed, and the writer bases his case on misstatements of the most astounding nature. Fraudulent intent to deceive seems to be at the bottom of the thing, but it has been done in such a clumsy and ignorant fashion that any who were deceived could not themselves have been very well informed in these matters. However, the intention, whether attended with success or not, is something much worse than con temptibly mean.

But even in a malicious attack we may find material for amusement, and the News blunders on with such ease that we cannot seriously think of offering to refute the allegations that have been made. The "Wairon” Harbor Board is sarcastically alluded to; it “ cultivates Spartan frugality of the severest sort on

a revenue of thirty shillings a year, although its expenditure amounts to X’z” And this unfortunate (or should we say fortunate ?) “ Wairon ” Board is alluded to no less than six times. In their greater wisdom the telegraph agents altered the name to “ Wairoa,” and our enterprising little neighboring township got all the glory and odium of being published in the metropolis as a defaulter at the rate of ten shillings a year 1 We sympathise with our fellow settlers in thus being deprived of their recently acquired fame, and no doubt Mr Large’s admirable little advocate of the rights of the Wairoa people will make its next appearance draped in the usual tokens of mourning, for it will be a great blow to the pride of the energetic people to be thus shorn of their share of public notice. But where is the Wairon harbor ? Old identities regard even the existence of such a township as a myth, and the books of reference are deficient in respect of its locality. In fact the News seems to be as well up in New Zealand geography as it is in that estimable quality known as veracity. It has proved itself to be an utterly worthless and unreliable print, run in the interest of a few stockjobbers.