TOWN EDITION. The Ensign. GORE: TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1896. A PLAIN ISSUE.

Mataura Ensign, Issue 213, 10 November 1896, Page 2

TOWN EDITION. The Ensign. GORE : TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1896. A PLAIN ISSUE.

The issue at stake in the Mataura electorate during the corning contest, despite the fact of strenuous efforts made in certain quarters to import into it side winds and minor considerations magnified a hundred diameters, is a plain one, and electors have to decide whether they are for a perpetuation of things known as Government by the Seddon administration or not. We take it that Mr McNab is the champion of the Seddon cause, and Mr Bichardson, we know, is its uncompromising opponent. It has been thought by many that Mr McNab of late has developed what might be termed Conservative instincts, but be this as it may, there is no escaping from the fact that he was returned to Parliament three years ago as the nominee of the Ministerial party, and not having openly renounced tlie articles of that particular political creed, and further, not having yet given a denial to tho charge that he was among the thirty fledglings who gave a written pledge to a certain Minister that they would stand loyal to the Liberal Party of the House, we feel safe in presuming that Mr .McNab is fighting the battle from the samo standpoint from which he first tasted tho sweets of victory at the Jast election. Most of tho electors in the district have heard the views of both candidates for their suffrages ere this, and have consequently had full opportunity for weighing the merits and demerits of both for themselves. One point which might require some explanation is the simple manner in which Mr MeNab's prosy setting forth of the colony's finances fell to pieces under tbepractiscd hand of his experienced opponent. It has always been a source of wonderment to us that Mr McNab should make finance the piece de resistance of most of his addresses to tho practical exclusion of all else, knowing as we do that figures relatiug to State finance in New Zealand are compiled in such a way which makes it the height of folly for anyone but an expert to take upon himself the duty of setting them forth to common mortals in anything like an intelligible manner. "With all his fame as a mathematician, Mr McNab certainly has not yet succeeded in such a task, and it is an open question, when he has completed the financial dissertation he usually inflicts upon his audiences, who is the more tangled up in an uninteresting array of pounds, shillings and pence ; net debt, gross revenue and what not — he, or those who remained awake to listen to him. But having elected to make State finance his forte, Mr McNab must take the risk of his temerity, and to those who have had occasion to listen to his utterances upon that subject it will come as no surprise that the clearer vision of the Hon. G. F. Richardson found him blundering to tune of half a million on the two first sets of figures he set out to deal with. In justice to Mr McNab we cannot allow it to be supposed that he knowingly attempted to ovev-favorably. represent the 'financial position of the present Government. Not for one moment. He simply, fell into the same error that would befall anyone else ignorant of tho first principles of the system, and quoted from wrong returns. Simply that and nothing more. Everything else about the two candidates' addressesis plain sailing — they speak for themselves. Electors are asked at the present juncture to decide which political creed best harmonises with their own, and whose views, given effect to, will most largely benefit the colony. This is a plain issue, and it remains but for the final result to show whether the electorate is satisfied to have a continuance of the policy put into force during the past six years, or not.