The Daily Telegraph. MONDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1890.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 6030, 22 December 1890, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. MONDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1890.

j i'EOM ouo end of the colony to tho othor comeH a cry for the repeal of tho ono man one vote principle of election, and the amendment of the Eloctoral Act of l«nt .session. When members of tho late Pariia- ! went blindly voted at tho dictation of Sir 1 George Gray for tho ouo inun ono voto VetitLori of tha Act, thoy little thought into what patha'of injustice they wore being led. It was considered to be i~ Mboral i principle, and, being such, <i popu ar thing i to agree to on the ovo of a geuorftl election. l' It oiiL'ht to hiivo been Buffioient tnat.lt I. 'emkaated from Sir George Groy to have V <-ioubi* fiuspioion as to its iwsohiovoue. ■ f But farliamunt, instead ol ■ mall ls; Uharaoter. ' - W**^, j Bcouliuy the uhsura i v . eijual to Huother, adopted tue *..^^

and made it law. To make it still worse, j by giving the four greatcities three members each, aud the electors the right to vote for three_candidates, a resident within any of the citieß had three votes, while the man in the suburbs had only one. The Christchurch Press exposes the injustice of the whole principle by giving the following example :—" Some twenty years or so ago thero oamo to New Zealand by the same ship two working men, both good tradesmen, married, and with one or two children each. At that time trade was brisk, and both men earned good wages. One of them was a man of a lively disposition. He could siuar a good song, and loved his glass of good beer; an excellent man at a ball or card party. By degrees he got into the spider's web, and graduj ally sank to the lowpst level—a bloated drunkard, a lazy, loafing vagabond. His poor wife, brokenhearted, died years ago, and his children have eosc the couutry hundreds of pounds iv ; charitable institutions and prisons. His shipmate was a sober, steady, haid-workinir. thrifty man: by degrees ho got a little jnopority about him, he reared his family in habits of sobriety and industry, and all of them are in good positions in tho colony. Ho purchased property in the suburbs outside of tho city, built a good house, aud employs numerous workmen ;he pays a property tax of several hundreds of pounds per annum, etc., etc. Now, this man can give just one vote for one memberof Parliament, while his shipmate of twenty yoars »go, who exists in the City of Christchurch, the drunken, lazy loafer, who crawls about town, living upon whatever he can either beg, borrow, or steal, has three votes, i.e., he can vote for throe members of Parliament. Is this just: Is this the one man one vote system we had in view when we sent men to Parliament." No, it is not what wo expected from the men we n?nt to Parliament. The preservation of the great industries of the colony was what was expected from th-im, and not a grovelling cringing to one particular class. By their action capital in its every form of employment in commerce, manufacture, mining, and agrioulture, has bern partially disfranchised in favor of labor, and it was attacked during the last elections as though the industrious thrifty enterprising capitalist was a curso to tho country. Every Democratic candidalo exhausted his ingenuity to place before the electors some scheme or another to drive capital away, and shake publio coufidenco in the honesty of the colony. Tho lessons thus inculcated were not thrown away, as may be seen by tho astonishing number of poor men who have boon elected. There never has been a House in which impecuniosity has been so largely represented, and this has been tho direct result of the one man one vote in the oountry districts, and tho one man three votes in the cities.