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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5
[interesting case]
An interesting case, so far as we know without precedent, has occurred at Waipawa. Mr Ellison, editor of the Mail, having been refused access to certain public documents in the custody of the county clerk, Mr Tuely, formally applied as a ratepayer, and being still refused, sued the clerk in the Magistrate's Court, under §186 of the Counties Act, to compel him to produce the papers. The magistrate gave judgment against Mr Ellison, with a guinea for solicitor's fee. The official applied for costs, but was refused. The magistrate held that ratepayers were entitled to examine the county books, but that a demand to inspect original vouchers was monstrous. Mr Ellison intends to appeal, and for the sake of the privileges of the press, we hope that he will. We hold that he was perfectly within his rights; and that it is « monstrous » that an editor's (or even a private ratepayer's) political orthodoxy should be the condition of access to documents which, being public property, are his property. As ratepayer, Mr Ellison is master; as county clerk, Mr Tuely is his paid servant. From a hint in a Napier paper, we infer that it was some newspaper accounts that Mr Ellison was desirous to see—which is not without significance. As the Pious Editor hath it with delightfully mingled metaphor, in the Biglow Papers:
Palsied the arm thet forges yokes
At my fat contracts squintin',
An' withered be the nose thet pokes
Inter the gov'ment printin'!