TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3214, 18 October 1881, Page 2

TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1881.

It ia the fashion for candidates to assert that they do not believe in canvassing for votes, and that to secure a pledge from an elector is to destroy the principle of the ballot. The electors, however, may place what value they please upon these obtrusively honest professions, for in spite of which a very large and general syetem of canvassing is being done on behalf of every candidate in the Seld. In the Waipawa district it is notorious that no stone is being left unturned to secure support for Mr Smith, and the most unscrupulous means are beiu? adopted to elevate that gentleman's qualifications in the eyes of electors. Iα the absence of any direct proof to the contrary, we disassociate Mr Smith from the efforts that are being made by the more ardent of his supporters in order to blacken the political character of his opponents. It may be that in politics, as in love and war, everything is fair ; but we do think that, if elections are to be conducted on the lines that are said to have had their orgin in America, the time is not distant when respectable people will abstain from contests that expose them to the calumnious shafts of the riff-raff of society. And it is noteworthy that the more extended the suffrage the greater the abase that is incorporated in an election, as though it were necessary to lower the tone of the contest to suit the tastes of the majority. We hold it to be an insult to the principle of manhood suffrage for any candidate to permit either himself or his supporters to degrade an by the employment of moans that would never have been used under a property qualification. It is an insult to those who, though poseessing no landed property, possess the right to vote, to suppose that they can neither appreciate nor understand other arguments but those which are liberally sprinkled with dirt. It is, we have reason to believe, a fact that the majority of those whose only qualification to vote is that of manhood are well educated men, thoroughly capable of judging for themselves the respective merits of the several candidates, and able to discriminate between solid argument and flashy declamation. It is absurd to suppose that such as these are to be hoodwinked by palpable falsehoods, and it is a gross insult to them for a candidate so to address them as though he bad to degrade his language to a level with their understanding. When a candidate is so mistaken in his estimate of his fellow settlers as to think that he ia advancing himself in their esteem by the employment of base means to < secure a seat in Parliament, it may be taken for granted that he has equally mistaken hie

mission in entering into the field of politics. With respect to Mr Ormond's character as a settler am- as a public man the most infamous falsehoods have been floated with the transparent object of damaging hia reputation in the eyes of j whose length of residence in the colony hao precluded them from watching his career. But we think that every intelligent man will say to himself, on hearing these outrageous accusations, that one who has kept his name in the foremost rank in the Legislature of the colony cannot be the unworthy individual that interested persona would make out. A man of force in Parliament ; one whose opinion has to be taken into consideration by the Government of the day, no matter what party may be in power, cannot be a despicable person ; he must at least be one who is above the average intellect of his clas?, and, in the possession of that quality he is at ail ever.:* entitled to sufficient respect to shield him from the mi■lβ'able stbuse of his inferiors. Mr supporters are over-reaching • hemselves. It is for them to sho.* that their candidate in superior to all other comers, but when they confiue themselves to mud throwing at one particular opponent it may be thought that being jealous of his superiority, they wish to make him appear as dirty as the man whose claims they are advocating.