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Grey River Argus, Volume XIII, Issue 1641, 7 November 1873, Page 2

Virtually., Mr Frank Hamilton is the elected member of the Borough Council for the East Ward, in the place of Mr Masters resigned ; Mr Woolcock, who was also nominated, haying yesterday practically intimated his declension of tlie troubles, of a contest or the honors of election or non-election. Apropos of this contest which was to be and is not, we may now notice the brief letter of Mt Woolcock, which appeared in yesterday's issue, and which raised the question of what he calls " pledged requisitions"— previous omission of any notice qf the, question which he put having been due to ' aft oversight. Mr Woolcock promises to feel obliged to us if we can " assist him in reconciling pledged requisitions, obtained at the very earliest stages of the proceedings^ with the honest and independent performance of our duties as citizens." And he asks, " how can weobtain that .knowledge and arrive at that; conviction which will enable ; us honestly to do our duty, until thie" number, names, and opinions of the candidates are known V We shall endeavor to oblige Mr Woolcock, premising that we are hob responsible for the peculiarities of his or any other man's moral perceptions, and that we look upon him as being, like the rest of us, no very extraordinary individual. As such, ,, we accept it that, "in affording him tn& necessary assistance, it will not [be requisite to place an electric .light before his optics,' or to, penetrate his cranium, with an auger. ;To begin at the corclusion, then, we may say at once. that our humble conclusion is that, in a -matter which the human mind is so easily capable of grasping as the election of one of two representatives of the third part of a little town like Greymouth, there is riot the slightest impropriety in "pledged requisitions obtained 'at the, very earliest stages of the . proceedings," and that they are perfectly reconcileable ," with the honest and independent performance of our duties as citizens." Elections, like every other proceeding, must. have a beginning. That beginning is, not invariably, but most frequently and legitimately, an expressed assurance from a number of men towards another that, in the event of his standing, they wilLsupport him. It may be written ; it maybe, spoken ; but it is convenient, mannerly, and common to formally fix it in/writing ; and the natural presumption is that no man would be fool enough to do ao 7 without deliberately preferring the gentleman named in the requisition to any other possible candidate, or weald enough (we shall say) to sign his name publicly and privately lie at the ballot-box. If there is impropriety, inuiility, and farce in " pledged requisitions " because the ballot-box is in existence, it is because men are, not fools, but rogues ; and we cannot possibly suppose that there is anything answering to that description up in the East, Ward. The ," Honest arid independent " man, in such a matter as this election— which, of course, is the case in point— could most easily make up his mind as to what one out of all possibla candidates he would vote for ; a child could do so ; but if the man were so overwhelmed with honesty, independence, and imcertainty, he should respectfully ask time for further consideration, and go to bedjor go into tlie country for a spel], or— better still— ask his wife. He should never be such a silly as to put

his name down if he did not mean to stand by it, and, if he did not stand by it, he was no silly. Catch a man put his name to a bill without knowing what he was doing, and a requisition is nothing more or less than a bill, and a much more moral transaction than many bills. To say that to sign and not to vote according to signature, is iri keeping with "the practice of elections "(on the West Coast) may be correct ; but never let it be said that it is not inconsistent with "the spirit" of British honor, or Briions }?acljbetfcei' at , once confess themselves slaves and burn the ballot-box. 'And never let any man I allow honest spirit tp.be influenced by the ! dishonest spirit and practice pf others ; 1 should a misconception arise, it is easily ! explainable, and should at once be explained. As to the scruples which Mr Woolcock, paiufully conscientious, entertains with regard ; to other men arriving conscientiously at a conviction without sufficient knowledge of " names, 5 numbers, , and opinions," there is no doubt that, in a large political field, there may be difficulty in deciding, and, therefore, so much the iriore necessity for reticence on the part of weaker vessels and the undecided ; but does anyone who lives in this molehill of ours, and who does not conceive it to be a mountain, fail to recognise 1 'the farce of all this elaboration of conscientious conviction, and so on ? Doesn't Tom know Harry, and doesn't Harry know Tom better than Tom knows Harry, all through the East Ward ; and does it matter a sixperice whether a man pledged ihimself to the first good-fellow he met, among the list of whom Mr Frank Hamilton and Mr Charles Woolcock may be fairly included 1