7 OCTOBER 1871, Page 17

"THE ELTHAM TRAGEDY REVIEWED."

rTO TDB EDITOR OF TIM `. SPECTATOR.")

really cannot allow you to escape, in the easy, complacent style you have adopted, from the consequences of your criticism

on my pamphlet. If you had confined yourself to comments 00 my publisher's release by the Grand Jury and on prosecutions tea libel in general, I should have had no right to make the slightest complaint, but you did more. You travelled into a discussion on the purpose and tendency of my review, and you brought an accusation against me which, next to a charge of fraud, is as serious as any charge which can be made against a man who bas undertaken the office of censor. You intimate that I am unfair and inaccurate. Next to my life and my honour, I value fairness and accuracy ; and as I am about to be tested on these very points by a jury—not so much from a moral and literary as a legal point. of view—I must protest against your remarks on me as unfounded and erroneous, intrusive and unjust.

I challenge you again to place your finger on a single statement of mine that is not strictly true, or on an argument that is not fairly and reasonably deduced from the facts before the worlds Bear in mind what is the object of my pamphlet. It is not to re- try the case,—not to attack the verdict of the jury ; but simply to analyze the judicial treatment of the evidence and the mode in which it was interpreted. I also desired to vindicate the witnesses and the conduct of the police, and to instruct those who required instruction in the arts and demeanour of murderers. Here is my aim distinctly expressed. Those who see in my book a great deal more than I intended must not saddle me with their inferences I have quite enough to bear without enduring the burdens thest legal people fabricate from their own imaginings.

I must therefore again ask you to retract or prove your charges You refer me to a mythical entity which you call the "impartial reader" to decide the question between us. As the first edition of my pamphlet cannot now be procured and discussed by impartial or any other kind of readers, I must decline to accept such a shadowy arbitration as that which you propose.

If therefore you do not adopt some satisfactory mode of giving me such redress as may be my due, many of your readers will be compelled to think, contrary to the opinion they have always hitherto entertained of you, that you can scatter about imputationa which you do not care to prove or to retract.—I am, Sir, &a., NEWTON CROSLAND.

[We regret that Mr. Crosland is not satisfied with our expla- nation. We shall be happy to accept his challenge, if he !AM thinks it necessary, as soon as the present proceedings are at an end ; but he must be fully aware of the impropriety of any such disoussios at this moment.—En. Spectator.]