PLURAL VOTING.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 10131, 2 September 1898, Page 6

PLURAL VOTING.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE PBKSS. Sir, —Do you not think that our distinguished visitor, Mr Sidney Webb, was a little severe upon members of our local governing bodies at the "interview" as reported in your Friday's issue ? and a little extravagant in choosing the London County Council as an ideal for our county councils to follow? Mr Webb expressed surprise that plural voting should still prevail here, when its abolition at Home had led to greatly increased activity, and' had done away with the apathy, jobbery and corruption which existed when the plural voting system was in force. Now, sir, let us take the second of Mr Webb's two contentions first, and apply it to our own circumstances; and if anyone can say that the members of our local governing bodies, now elected under the plural voting system and unpaid, show any apathy in the conduct of their business, any jobbery or any corruption, when compared with the members of our Legislature who are elected under the broadest franchise known and paid handsomely for their services (?) —then by all means let us do away with plural voting altogether. But, in support of Mr Webb's first contention, that a broader franchise conduced to a greatly increased activity, he mentioned that the London County Council was now spending £8000 a year on bands to play music in the parks and £40,000 annually on scholarships. These of course are little unconsidered trifles in the ordinary expenditure, and he makes no mention of the proposal to spend four and a half millions on the formation of a new boulevard or an odd million or two in the erection and maintenance of a people's opera house. It all goes, however, to show that he is right in hie contention, that the broader the local franchise is, so much more active will the expenditure be. But do we want, or rather can we stand, the strain of this " erreater activity" in our expenditure, which is so surely to follow on the abolition of plural voting and the extension of our local franchise ? Our whole colony is not the equal in accumulated wealth of this one London County Council, and even there the ratepayers do not look upon the state of affairs with unmixed approval. It is time, then, for the ratepayers throughout the colony to consider whether they will allow I he-Government to interfere with the local franchise in the way in which they threaten; and to remember that Mr Webb, the greatest Sooialist of the day, has based

his advocacy for the change oc grounds which either are directly the reverse of what we know to be the case in New Zealand, or -which promise an increased activity in our expenditure which we cannot stand. Apologising for the length of this letter,— Yours, ft*. F . A. ANSON. Piraki, August 29th.