Page:Nil Durpan.djvu/209

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notice in the briefest manner. Mr. Seton-Karr complains that he had been kept silent by his uncertainty as to the course intended to be taken by the Association. Had a direct answer been given by the Bengal Government to the questions of responsibility when put to them by the Association, there would have been left no room for doubt. A tithe of the statement now made, had it been substituted for the miserably evasive letter of the Lieutenant Governor on the 3rd June, would have settled all such doubts in a few hours. Mr. Seton-Karr and the Bengal Government are late in the day for the expression of this sort of surprise after having allowed Mr. Long to stand alone as the publisher of the Nil Durpan, at the time of the trial of Manuel, the printer. The Association did not then leave much doubt as to their course. Mr. Long then said, "I am the publisher", but it is after Mr. Long's conviction that Mr. Seton-Karr says that the drama was translated and the libels published "with his sanction and knowledge." It was proved at the reverend victim's trial that he paid the printer's bill; but though it is now declared that "500 copies were printed and sent to the Bengal Office,"—it is left to us to declare that the bill was sent to that Office also, but was withdrawn after the first letter from the Association was written; and that the bill, which was intended to have been paid from the public purse, has only been paid from private resources, and those not Mr. Long's, in consequence of the public explosion of the matter. Even now, after as ample an apology as a gentleman can offer to those whom he has aggrieved, the "heaven-born" element is stronger than the mere man in Mr. Seton-Karr; and to this moment he does not realize the gravity of his position as a high official having lent himself under party feelings to most unbecoming and unconstitutional degradation of his Official position; or as a legislator having had recourse, under like influences, to a breach of the law. For instance, he says, "I contend that the very fact of circulation under Official frank, shows that no secrecy was attempted or intended beyond the unavoidable secrecy of the Post Office". Now that we have at last arrived at a distinct avowal of Mr. Seton-Karr's responsibility for the circulation of the libellous book in a form in which we can fairly and honourably use the admission, we purpose to take care that he shall arrive at the truth one way or other about such a use of the

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