Hawke's Bay Herald. WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 1894.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 9681, 16 May 1894, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Herald. WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 1894.

WHAT IS "ISUIIJKKY" IN NEWI'OUNDLAND. DuniNi; the last two or three, days wo have published several messages from Newfoundland to the ell'ect that the Chief Justice ot that colony had unseated a number of members of thu Legislature for corrupt practices at the late general elections. In a lato Home paper we find tho following explanatory cable most-age :—" The Hon. Sir tames Winter, Assistant Judge, delivered judgment at St. Joliu'k, Newfoundland, on Tue.".lny, In the I! ly do Ver.l election eu«e. lie found that tho lion. Henry Woods, the Surveyor-ficuernl, and Mr Moors, also a suppmter of the Government, bad been guilty of bribery uud corruption at the ltvit elections, and made an order that both should be unseated and disqualified from re-election. The principal charge brought against them was that thoy had expended largo emus of publio money just boforo tbe elections

in giving employment on public worka In I order to influence votes. Fifteen other members of the Government party have been petitioned against on the same ground, and the position of Sir William Whiteway's Government is regarded as precarious." The Chief Justice has now seemingly finished the list, and unseated all the members petitioned against. They apparently draw very fine conclusions in Newfoundland. Wo are accustomed to regard the United States as the hotbed of political corruption, and Canada and Newfoundland as very Uttle better. But in the last-named colony, at least, they are a lobr way ahead of New Zealand in their ideas as to what constitutes bribery and corruption. Whore would the Hon. I John M'Kenclo be now if such a rigid rule had been laid down relative to the employment of men on public Works in the Waihemo electorate^ Where would his colleagues he if tbeir law of "the spoils to the victors," so literally and liberally acted up to by them, were regarded through the very clear Bpectactes of Chief Justice Sir James Winter ? Yet the Chief Justice is light. It ls just aa wrong, morally, to stuff the rolls of n constituency b shifting large bodies of men of tho *' right color " there just before an election as it is to stuff them with bogus names under which men ordinarily bearing other cognomens can poll a second time. It is jnst as wrong to bribe a whole constituency by the expenditure of public money as by the expenditure from a candidate's putse. Nay, rightly conoideled, it is if anything worse, for the money so expended is the property of the whole community, spent for tbo benefit of an Individnal or a party. Yet, though tho present Ministry have carried Bueh bribery to an extreme, li would be utter folly to deny that they hac more than enough precedents to jastifj them, if precedents can justify a wrong A very large part oi our publio work expenditure has, we regret to say, beei expended more with a view to secun political support than to the necessity o publio utility of the worka undertaken New Zealand haa seen a railway to-tall; unauthorised by Parliament started a the Thames to buy support foraMlnlstei 0 and for some fifteen years the rails an y sleepers have lain rotting, with never t train over them. Indeed we need not g j- so far away from home for examples, ft c was not the Pott Ahuriri bridge put i 'c hand when it was In the hope of favors t como at the hands of Napier electors K There is, perhaps, not a part of the colon io where similar attempts to influence elet it tions by tho expenditure of public mone lt have not hu-a made. The colonists t y New Zealand are sometimes described h visitors as given to bragging that the lead the world. But in the matter i 1 political purity Newfoundland haa show • us the way to better things.