The Inangahua Times, PUBLISHED TRI-WEEKLY. MONDAY, MAY 28, 1883.

Inangahua Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1277, 28 May 1883, Page 2

The Inangahua Times, PUBLISHED TRI- WEEKLY. MONDAY, MAY 28, 1883.

Referring to the- Inangahua election the Christchurch Star says: — "The defeat of Mr. Wakefield for the Inangahua district is another proof, if any were wanted, of how little the present constituencies care for political ability in their choice of a member. Mr. Wakefield is well known throughout New Zealand as an able political writer and thinker, and as a politician of experience. Mr. Shaw is nobody — an ex-Government employee, yet the nobody is chosen because he is the Government candidate, and the electors of Inangahua hope to get public works in their district if they elect a Government man. In this they will perhaps be mistaken. An out-and-out Government supporter is less likely to get anything done for his district than an independent member whose vote trembles in the balance. We know districts which have been bitterly disappointed in this way; they have fondly hoped that when they elected a thorough-going Government supporter they had only to ask and have. But they have found that their member was working for himself, and not for them. After three years steady voting he has a claim upon the Government, and when he does not go in for ministerial office, he has only to retire from actiye politics for a twelvemonth, when there opens upon him the golden vista of an obscure but snug billet for life. The virtuous ex-member accepts with gratitude, and quietly subsides into private life. What can the constituency say 1 They elected him as a Government supporter; he has voted accordingly. He never promised them that the Government would, in consequence, spend more than a fair share of public money in the district. Certainly not ; we do not speak in this coarseblunt fashion in New Zealand. We do not sell our votes ; we do not make corrupt bargains of this kind — at least not in so many words. We only impress upon the Minister of Works the enormous importance, from a Colonial point of view, of developing 1 the immense natural resources of this district' Our member backs us up; our member even waxes virtuously indignant with the Government because they have not ' developed,' &c. But he votes with them next session just the same. Nothing would induce him to vote against them, for an adverse vote might mean a dissolution, and a dissolution means expense, and the Bank in these hard times is not so free in its advances to promising politicians as it was in the days of yore, when a man could have an overdraft for a couple of hundred for election expenses, hy just asking for it.' Things are very dull now. If this sort of thing goeß on, a seat will be hardly worth contesting. The Government really have nothing to give away."