REVIEW OF MR. SETON-KARR'S STATEMENT.
Mr. Seton-Karr has sent us a statement of his connection with the much debated Nil Durpan case to which we very willingly give the same prominent assertion as we accord to our own comments on his conduct in the affair. Nothing can be more sincere than the tone of this statement, which is the manifest production of an originally able mind, lamentably crippled by the circumstances of its life-long position. There are sentences in it which do honour to the writer's heart and nature but as a whole it adds one more to the many sad testimonies that no nature can wholly withstand the influences of such a false position as that of a dignitary trained and developed in the last generation of the old Civil Service. We accord full honour to and accept with the fullest appreciation the assurance with which Mr. Seton-Karr closes his statement. None but a well-bred gentleman and honourable man could have written at the close such a statement:— "While I fully admit that my course as regard to the publication has been a mistaken one, and that I ought not to shrink from owning my mistake or my deep regret for it, I feel that I have nothing to reproach my conscience with or to be ashamed of, as no act or word of mine has been in the remotest degree influenced by the feeling of personal hostility towards the planters, which has been most erroneously imputed to me." But whilst giving the writer of it the fullest credit for sincerity and honourable intention, we condemn most entirely the principle on which he declares himself to have acted; we demur to every conclusion he deduces; and we declare that the public servant who avows his course on such grounds as he here takes, is, on his own showing, altogether unfit for the high and responsible position of a legislator or administrator in the critical hours of the formation, out of sheer chaos, of constitutional Government for the youngest and well—nigh the greatest of Empires. As this important document only reached us yesterday afternoon, we can but touch upon its more salient points. Nor indeed is much more needed, for, in most points it is more than answered; it is demolished by the address of the Landholders' Association to those to whom Mr. Seton-Karr had circulated the Nil Durpan, which follows it. There are, however, a few points which we must
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