The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and Echo. TUESDAY, JULY 15, 1881.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 4421, 15 July 1884, Page 2

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

TUESDAY, JULY 15, 1881.

For the CUU9O that lafka aßSlstaoM, For the wrong that oeeia raslatano*. For tho futuro in tho distance. And the Rood that we can do.

We promised in our last night's issue to review the candidates in the several constituencies on their persona! merits, anil we select for the fust article the contest in Newton. Ml the claimants for the suffrages of the electors in this district have given public expression to their opinions; we may fairly assume, therefore, that we know their opinions, their personal capabilities and claims. Three men are in the field, hut one of them. Mr liarrard, may be dismissed in a very few words. There are many electors and non-eleciors whose love of fun triumphs over that sunse ot serious responsibility to themselves and the country which .every true man should feel in exercising his rights under the franchise. They are not unwilling to get a little sport out of any blathering windbag who is willing to give it them. It is not good form to play upon any man's idiosyncracies, and make a public butt of him ; neither is it productive of an intelligent consideration of great public questions to demaud the antics of a mountebank aft;r the speech of a Demosthenes. We state the recent experience at some of our most important elections parabolically. The exhibition ot' a modicum of common sense would have reduced the number of candidates to two; but Mr (larranl having received sufficient encouiagement from a public meeting in Newton to justify him in coming forward, we think he is fairly entitled to expect that those who passed the motion of confidence in him will give him their votes.

For our purposes, however, there are only two candidates for Newton —Mr Thomas Peacock and Mr C. A. De Lautour. We take Mr Peacock first— he is no unknown figure to Auckland citizens. At any time during the last twenty years he might have been found at his place of business, industriously pursuing his calling as a skilled scientific mechanic. For twenty years he has been known as a man who eschewed tile temptations of land jobbing and invested the savings from his business in promoting the industries of the country —in developing its coal resources, its timber, its gold-mining, and who recently, without owning one acre of land to be bencfitted, was one of the chief promoters, by the gift of his time and his money, of the movement to connect Auckland with the Wonderland of kotorua. For twenty years liis word has been as good as his bond ; he has been known as a man of integrity, a man whose name the breath of scandal has never sullied ; honest and unreserved almost to brusqueness in the expression of his convictions. Publicly he has actively interested himself in the social, religious, scientific, and municipal institutions of the city. He has for two successive years fitted the highest office in the gift of the citizens, and has done so with credit to himself and honour to those who elected him. For three years he has served as a representative of Auckland city in Parliament, gaining the esteem of his political opponents equally with that of the men on the same side of the House. He has been a useful member for the city, always in his place, and giving diligent attention to any city or commercial measure; true to every pledge he had given, and assiduous in performing every duty imposed upon him by his constituency. In Parliament, in the Chamber of Commerce, and elsewhere he has been the earnest and unresting champion of the trunk railway from Auckland to Taranaki, the work upon which, above all others, the future prosperity of Auckland depends. In general politics, a pronounced Liberal, who is not afraid to say that wealth should bear its full share ol the public burdens. We have no inclination to flatter the late member for City North ; we owe him nothing, and would as readily bring him to account for any dereliction of duty as any other member; but the qualifications enumerated are matters of common knowledge. The first man one might meet in the street, if he were an Aucklauder of many } ears' standing, could tell them. We warmly advocated his first election to Parliament', and after three years' rellection have seen no reason to regret having done so.

So much for Mr Peacock ; what of Ih's opponent ? Although so great a stranger to Auckland that lie might be set down in parts of Newton electorate and be unable to find I.is way out of it, Mr De Lautour is well-known by repute. Like Mr Peacock, his advancement has been due to personal exertions, but, unlike the late member for Auckland North, having found a footing in a noble calling, one which above all others enables a man to do great service for the people, Mr De Lautour deserted it to enter one which,if productive of fatter fees for less work, is, to our mind, infinitely less usefn) and honourable. Mr De Lautour was a journalist, and he became a lawyer. It was when a writer for the Press and a legislator that Mr De Lautour won that reputation for a friendliness towards Liberalism which still, in a lesser degree, clings to him. No one who is acquainted with his earlier public utterances, and who attentively studied his recent political

actions and the address he delivered in | the Ponsonby Hall, which was reviewed | in these columns on Friday las', ; can avoid the conviction that Mr De Lnutour's Liberalism has undergone' an evolutionary development backwards since he became the legal agent of land-jobbers. Into thn fatal fallacy of the priii'iplc; he laid down, into their gross sclli:>liiiet,s, their dcsUii'jtive.ii'-'KI.; lo every communal cllorl ol lite masses of the people tv govern the country for the advantage of the many and not of the kw, we need not again enter. This we may add, however, that whereas Mr De Laulour, in the earlier days of his public career, distinguished biinseli by denouncing the special privilege.-; which are conlinuo.usly attempted to be set up undci private hills, he becmne him self the promo'er of a private bill that j would have created a monopoly of the most publicly dainayiny kind -a monopoly in the kinds of the country, This is no time for mincing words : we cannot believe that the denunciation of land monopoly is oilier than arrant hypocrisy and humbug when it comes from the lips of a man who is the active manager of the biggest land-jobbing corporation in New Zealand—a company whose contemplated transactions are lo be measured not by the tens or the hundreds of thousands but by the millions of acres.