PROXY VOTING.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXXI, Issue 5578, 13 July 1875, Page 3

PROXY VOTING.

To the Editor : Sir, — I cannot Me the justice of the severe remarks which are constantly being made against proxy roting at road boards, more particularly at the Parnell meeting, the strongest feeling at which meeting, after all, seemed to be that the proxy votes were the wrong way to please one set of people. But look at the other side of the question. If lam a bona fide voter, but am placed in such circumstances that I cannot attend the meeting, am I to be disfranchised ? and hundreds of persons ar« so placed, whether as captains of coasters, clerks in banks or mercantile firms, who cannot be present, and therefore they select friends to whom to confide their vote. Again, if I possess an equal right to vote in three or four districts and the meetings are advertised for the same day, which is very frequently the case, am I entirely to lose my vote in two or three of them ? And, after all, this proxy voting serves a very good purpose in checking another great evil, "packing meetings." What is easier, and what more frequently done, than to go round canvassing persons to attend such meetings as ' ' we want to get such and such in, as our trustees," and by a little exertion it is no difficult matter to get 30 or 40 people present ; particularly if you tell them there is sure to be some fun. One gentleman at the Parnoll meeting made a most silly remark, calling all the ratepayers of Parnell, dummies. Does that gentleman mean that if I lived next next door to him, and could not possibly attend the meeting, but said, as yon are going, vote for me and here is my proxy, that I am thus a dummy ? A man can be quite as much a dummy although attending a meeting as by being absent. Of coarse, were may be an abuse of the right of proxies, and where it is aa, expose it ; and where they are falsely obtained, expose it ; but I cannot see the great evil of the system generally. lam open to conviction, bat I must see the evil of it before I am convinced, and I am not convinced by the chagrin of the party not getring their man in. — I am, Ac, J. CmsfE.