Hawke's Bay Herald. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1880. REPRESENTATIVE MEN.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5833, 19 November 1880, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Herald. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1880. REPRESENTATIVE MEN.

Itf kis recent address to his constituents at Kaiapoi, Mr Bowen spoke of the duty 1 devolving upon every constituency, and ] every individual elector, of choosing as representatives in Parliament men of uu- • blemished character, education, and good i business knowledge. IST or are his words '■ of warning unnceded. If we look at our . House of Representatives individually we i find men who would do no discredit to the j Legislature of England — one or two who ; even there would take a loading part, and i many who would pass muster as men of average capacity and honesty. But some, < though happily few, can lay claim to neither qualification. They owe their election to a greater facility of speech than their compeers, and, having become members of the House, their first object in life is to make the position subservient to their own personal ends, trusting to shameless log-rolling and political prostitution, to please their constituents, and so secure their re-election another time. These men are not creditable representatives, but even they are better than one or two — chiefly returned by goldfields .™v?iifcuencies — who are shunned by men or~Tr6nu"Siy" " and selF~respeCT~ai3a* ~ looked upon as very pariahs of the House, It is a pitiful thing to confess it, but those who have sat in the House know that there are individuals so lost to self -respect and a sense of their position that it is not uncommon to see them stagger to their places in a state of intoxication. Mr Bowen must have had many mental pictures of discreditable exhibitions of this sort before him when he spoke, and his words were not iateuded to pass as mere generalities uttered for want of something better to Say, but were utterances full of meaning, wrung from him by a sense of the degradation of the House itself by the action of two or threo of its members.

It is more especially to the thinking class of tho community that Mr Bowen's words will appeal. It devolves upon all men of intelligence to do what they can to prevent the election of xinqualified representatives, by rigidly applying to candidates the tests suggested by Mr Bowen. First they should be of unblemished reputation. They should not be new men — men of to-day, whose past is unknown, and who can only be judged by their words on the hustings — but those who have for years mixed in civil or political life, and have proved their worth and their ability to persevere in a right course even when tho right was unpopular. Then they should be men of education. We do not mean by this mere bookworms — representatives of the schools who know more of ancient Roman history than of passing events— but men who have brains to see what the country requires, and determination to persist in the course they have marked out for themselves. A man may have but an imperfect acquaintance with the reign of Cissar— he may even be unable to express himself with perfect grammatical accuracy — and yet make a good representative and be respected in tlio House. We need not go further than Mr Swanson as an instance of a self-educated man able to lift up his head with the best. He certainly had few educational advantages in his youth, but lie has exercised his native shrewdness and power of observation until he is better qualified to represent a constituency in Parliament than many men whose knowledge of books is much greater. And last, but not least, comes the test of business capacity. Every caudidate should by his past have shown himself possessed of ability to manage his own private affairs or he should not bo trusted to manage the affairs of the colony. A Mr Micawber should never be allowed to tread the floor of the House, for a few men like Dickens's creation — and they may be met with every day, and in every community — might land tho colony in inextricable difficulties. A clever, unscrupulous, windy demagogue can always secure a certain amount of support from tho unthinking, and to counteract this element those who have greater discriminating powers should band themselves together to select and support honest and capable representatives.