DIRECT VOTE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXX, Issue 10104, 1 August 1893, Page 2

DIRECT VOTE.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, —In your Saturday’s issue “The Other Faddist ” says I am apparently in opposition to the direct vote. lam not; but I am in opposition to the direct veto or prohibition. I am quite in favour of all having a direct vote providing they, by the use of it, do not infringe upon the natural rights of their fellow-men. And I take it no one would desire,to do this unless they were either a knave or a prohibitionist, and it ill becomes either the one or the other to talk of “class prejudice and barren sentimentality.” If the prohibitionist displays one characteristic more than another it is a prejudice against a certain class of the community—a prejudice that is upheld and maintained by selfish sentimentality. Let “ Another Faddist ” look up the agricultural statistics and see the quantity of barley grown by the farmer and used in the industry the faddists wish to destroy. Let him then look at the prices of the other products of the farmer and imagine what it would be were we all to atop growing barley and increase the supply of these. It would simply mean, us i have already pointed out, a dearth of employment for farm bands—less farm hands more unemployed, more unemployed more pauperism, more pauperism extra taxation. Extra taxation on a people already overburdened would reduce them to a state when oven “ the small potatoes of Ireland” would bo received as a God-aend. “ Another Faddist” shows himself so callous to the interests of the farmer that I doubt very much if ho could tell the difference between a potato and a pumpkin. I should like to remind him that some laud that will not grow potatoes will grow barley. Stop the output of this, and we havo neither potatoes nor barleys. Should “ Another Faddist ” he one fa those whose only wish is to do away with licensed houses by what be terms the direct vote, I would just draw his attention to the condition oi affairs in Cardiff as shown in Friday’s Times.— l am, &c., SMALL FARMER.

WOMAN’S FRANCHISE. TO THE EDITOR. g lß> —Will you allow me to correct Mr Duval’s statement that vro had not got

twenty-seven signatures, let alone twentyseven thousand ? I am witness to one hundred signatures. How a man can get up and state such barefaced falsehoods before such aa audience I am at a loss to know. Then, again, he says if we had a vote we should neglect our homes and children. Let me ask Mr Duval how many poor women have to leave their homes and children to the mercy of kind neighbours, or drag them with them, on Saturday nights, plodding through mud and rain, in quest of their husbands from publichouse to publichouae, hoping to find him before he has spent the few last shillings of his wages.—l am, &c,, A WOMAN. TO THE EDITOB. Sra,—l think the friends of woman’s franchise should feel grateful to Mr Duval for the exhibition of weakness displayed by him in opposing tho measure at the public meeting in the Oddfellows’ Hall on last Friday night. He entertained the audience delightfully; his ravings, incoherences, and splutterings were ail considered immensely funny, as was evidenced by the roars of laughter which greeted hia utterances. And when, shortly afterwards, on seeing one of the ladies on the platform rise to address the meeting, he took up his hat and iguominouaiy fled the scene, the effect was something to be remembered. In fact, I have been told that some of the promoters of the meeting were seriously asked if they had not engaged him on purpose to make the opposition appear ridiculous. It would indeed seem so, for the only argument (?) he attempted to use against the franchise was that a woman had shut up three children in the house who were suffering from measles, and lefh them to attend a meeting. Was ever anything more silly ? Because one woman acts in a certain way, all women are unfit to be entrusted with, a vote. I would, like to ask Mr Duval if he thinks every man is kind and good and moral, and fit to be entrusted with a vote y Men have been known to turn their wives and children out of the house on cold winter nights, which is a shade worse than locking them in; yet men possess a vote, and I have never heard it said fiat, all cruel men should be deprived ot their votes because of their cruelty. Mr Duval also said that a plebiscite should be taken before women get the franchise. Was a plebiscite taken when the one-raan-oue-vote became law ? No, it was not; aad it is foolish to advocate such one-sided methods to English people, whose sense of justice is proverbial. Men like Mr Duval had better cay straight out, that this measure is against their interests or their prejudices, and oppose it as much as they like, and cease to deal with small side-issues which affect the great principle of the question about as much as (to quote Sydney Smith) "scratching the come of St Paul’s affects the Dean and Chapter.”I am, &c., FRANCHISE.