The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED "The Evening News," "The Morning News," and "The Echo." WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1875.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1830, 29 December 1875, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED "The Evening News," "The Morning News," and "The Echo."

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1875.

For ihe cause that l.icks assistance, l-'or tlie wrung that needs resistance, l;or the future in the distance, And the _;ood that we can do.

Electors of City East ! you will to-morrow be called upon to elect a member to represent you in the next Parliament. On no occasion since the franchise was conferred upon you has there arisen a period more fraught with good or evil to this colony, and especially to the province of Auckland, than the present, and it behoves you, therefore, to divest your minds of all persona! predilections or animosities, and to exercise your votes as free men, animated solely by a good conscience and a patriotic desire so to use the trust reposed in yon as will best promote the interests, not of City East only, but of this province and the colony of which it forms a once leading, but now a secondary and a rapidly declining part. For five years jou have seen the rest of New Zealand growing in prosperity, in wealth, and population, fattening upon the unjust distribution of the colonial revenues. You have seen saddled upon the colony an enormous debt for which the credit of yourselves and your children has been pledged, and for which you will be taxed to the uttermost farthing ; and that money you have seen expended in the way most calculated to sink you and to raise portions of the colony already enjoying enormous revenues from lands which were properly your birthright. You have seen systematically ignored this, the largest province in the colony, which has contributed nearly one-fourth of the colonial revenue, and has contended in the past and still contends against difficulties in the way of settlement which none of those wealthy provinces have ever felt. You have seen that money for which you arid your children are responsible expended in constructing in the province of Otago, with a smaller area of land to open up than Auckland, 248 miles 41 chains of railway, open or under construction ; in Canterbury, with still less area and population, 246 miles of railway ; in Wellington, with not half the population, 102 miles 5 chains; in Hawke's Bay, with a population equal to only half of that; in this city, 40 miles 23 chains, and in Auckland only 102 miles. You have seen your best lands dissipated in bribes to ministerial friends and supporters; your protests treated with contempt ; and your members corrupted and protected by special enactment from the operation of thoselawa which they had broken. All this you have seen carried on with the sanction and support of many of those men who should have represented you. And, finally, when the outcry against this iniquity could no longer be resisted ; when those unjust stewards must once more be brought to the bar of their country ; you have seen your constitution torn up and thrown down as a bone of contention in the hope of diverting attention from the multitude of wrongs crying out for public vengeance. This, Electors of City East, is whatyou have seen in the past, and what you may yet see hereafter, unless you make known through the ballot box tomorrow that no longer shall you appear to tolerate upon any pretence whatever a Ministry one half of whose publicly exposea iniquities would have secured the everlasting disgrace of any Government in any other ' English-speaking community. Such then, is the evil you have to contend against, and it behoves yon to determine impartially what possible means there is of sweeping it away. Can yon, aa sensible men, see any chance of effecting even one reform if each representative went in wedded to his own special views, or indeed unless every "member has distinctly pledged his word to his constituents, that he will work under one leader for the common cause ? Can you conceive of a leader with a party composed, say; of eighteen intelligent men sent to Parliament from this province, each able to propound his own; views in framing any policy f whicU yarying circumstances may render xaost advisable, but at the same time content 'to J;„lr -nma of hia nreed inTthat agreedSto by

advancing the interests of cite province as he

— can \ fin, vv_ ask, conceive of such a leader doing <v |). i «^it'e than that which is best for yottr in .cast , or can you expect any statesman to accept ihe position of a leader unless a concession <,f personal views to the wi3h of tho majority will be made by his followers. Can you imagine a party having any adherence or usefulness if each member of that party had declared that he would only vote with the leader when his own personal views were satisfied, and that ho would rather endure the Iniquities of a political Sodom than sacrifice one jot or tittle of those opinions. It is for you, the electors, to choose your leader, and then exact this pledge from your members. We believe you have chosen Sir George Grey, whose committee have put forward and specially desire the return of Mr Rees. Guided by the light of the past experience of this mis-represented province, it remains for you to say now through the ballot-box that an express and unequivocal promise to carry out your views is the only claim to your confidence which you will recognise.