TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3225, 31 October 1881, Page 2

TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1881.

Every preparation being now nearly completed, it will not be many days before the writs are issued for the general elections. There being no great questions before the country upon which political parties are divided, the elections will hinge more upon the personal merits of the candidates than upon other qualifications. The chief interest of the elections will be found in the fact that, for the first time in this colony, they will be conducted on the basis of manhood suffrage. It will be interesting to observe the effect the wideoing of the electoral rolls will have upon the constitution of the new Parliament, and to note whether narrow minded prejudices or liberal convictions have played the more' important part in the choice of representatives. There are those in tbe colony who do not place too much confidence in the discriminating powers of the many wbo, under manhood suffrage, will practically control the elections. They fear that the great majority of the people are rarely inclined to exercise their own judgment, and are so apt to be lead away by the allurements ofsraoth-tongued speakers that little reliance can be placed in their judgment. They fear that the extension of the suffraee may not improbably lead to tbe rejection of the best candidates, and the acceptance of the most plausible and the least useful. The ensuing elections, we think, will dispel all such fears. A few electors may, perhaps, permit themselves to be guided by their personal prejudices, but we think it will be found that in the majority of cases the best men will be placed at the head of the poll. It rests, however, entirely with the working men of New Zealand to justify the extension of the suffrage by their choice of those they 6end to Parliament. Our own opinion is that the non-propertied classes are just as capable of weighing the qualifications ot candidates as those who previously alone had the privilege of voting at an election. We feel assured that they are very much mistaken who think that working men vvlll vote in blind obedience to ,the dictates of employers. It is gratuitous impertinence to assert, as we constantly hear it asserted, that Mr So-and-so, or Mr Anybody Else can influence such-and-such a number of votes. An assertion of this kind implies that so many of the electors have no opinion of their own, and tbat they will vote in any way their friend or employer may choose to direct. We do not think the working men of this colony have fallen so very low as that would make it appear. Some people seem to be under the impression that all the persons whose names have been put on the roll by means of some one's exertions will vote in accordance with that individual's wishes; and instances have come under our own notice in which persons think they are under an obligation to him who caused their names to be placed on the roll, and thereby are morally bound to vote on his side. Nothing can be more mistaken than such an idea. Twelve months' residence in tbe colony, and six months' residence in one district, entitle a man of twenty-one years of age to be an elector, and there is no obligation to any one who has busied himself in putting his name on the roll. It would not say much in justification of manhood suffrage if an employer could confidently count on the votes of bis workmen by merely taking care to get their names registered as electors. Electioneering agents and some others may rest in the belief that the batches of names they have forwarded from time to time to the Registration Officer represent the number of votes they can calculate upon for their candidate, but we shall be very far out in our estimate of the elections if the polling iiscloses anything of the sort. The ballot has effectually crushed any influence that formerly could be exercised over the man ot small means ; and the penalties under the '* Corrupt Practices Prevention Act " remove the temptation to coerce those who are dependent on the wealthy. Those who will vote for the first time in their lives at the ensuing elections should, however, be put on their guard against the pretensions of men who would never have been heard of as Parliamentary candidates under any other suffrage than that of manhood. It does not stand to reason that because everybody has a right to vote that everyone' is fitted to be a legislator. But vanity and ambition play an important part in tbe careers of all men, and it ia a fact <

that, wifh the extension of the suffrage, - men with absolutely nothing to recommend them will offer themselves as representatives, as though human intelligence had been lowered by giving the non? propertied classes a vote. While we hold to the opinion that it is necessary to the progress of a country that its every interest should be represented in its Pailiament, we cannot think that any interest can be benefited by representatives of a lower standard than what the classes composing that interest could produce. The man who is intellectually and morally the superior of his class should be the one to offer himself as a representative ; but representation .is a farce when the representative is the inferior of the great body of his constituents. *