THE NELSON EXAMINER. "Wednesday, February 3, 1869.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXVIII, Issue 10, 3 February 1869, Page 2

THE NELSON EXAMINER. "Wednesday, February 3, 1869.

Journals become more necessary as men become more equal and individualism more to be feared. It would be to underrate tlieir importance to suppose that they Berve only to secure liberty ; they maintain civilization. Db Tocqcevillb, OF Democracy in America, vol. 5, 230. Among the chief duties of those who are entrusted with the direction of public affairs must be numbered a continued watchfulness to see that the machinery of government works, not only so as to accomplish its most important functions with certainty, but also with ease. Power alone to achieve its purj pose is not sufficient ; there must be no unnecessary friction — no jarring in its action. It is not merely that irritation is caused, the machine itself will be destroyed for want of a little careful fitting of its component parts, and calamities will follow far in excess of the apparent cause. This ought to be no source of astonishment to anyone who remembers that resistance to oppression, in whatever form or however slight, is one of the passions most firmly implanted in the nature of man. The burdens of the State will be borne cheerfully when it is felt that justice alone has decided how they shall be apportioned. Restrictions prohibiting any course of action — innocent in the abstract — will be submitted to without murmuring when it is shewn that the general good is promoted by their existence. Let it, however, be even suspected that any law or system has furthered the perpetration of wrong, has placed power in the hands of those who would not otherwise have possessed it, or has in any degree enabled the will of the people to be defeated, and at once comes a burst of anger seemingly out of proportion to the immediate cause, though really warranted because the sacred principles of truth and right have been violated. "We in New Zealand possess a representative system adapted in some points to win the approbation of the advanced reformer, for almost every man in the colony who lias made it his permanent home possesses a vote either as a householder or the owner of some small piece of real property ; so that, in fact, household suffrage and something more is in practical operation with us. Still the machine does not work smoothly. No severelycontested election is seen without there being small charges of bribery, of treating, of undue influence or coercion either by employers or creditors, and in consequence that quiet content in the possession of a constitutional right, that modest exultation in success, and that assurance in failure, that it has resulted only from being out-numbered by those holding opposite opinions, is absent ; and instead, right or wrong, lasting animosity is awakened. An impression is left that, had every voter been influenced by patriotic motives alone the result would have been different, and thus victory is robbed of its greatest charms and the bitterness of defeat is increased. It is no sufficient answer to say in any particular case, these imputations of fraud or force rest on no good ground and are the emanations of envious disappointment ; nor to point out laws that, in form at least, are sufficiently severe against such offences and proceed to argue that no offenders would be hardy enough to defy both public opinion and the penalties to which they would be subject in case of detection followed by a successful prosecution. A sense of injustice exists that no amount of special pleading can remove. So long as there remains a belief in the possibility of the fountain of constitutional power being polluted, we should endeavour to devise some means for placing those actions beyond the range of probable occurrence which it is now urged prevail whenever ambition or interest is more powerful than the obligation of strict morality. Various Acts have been passed, here as in England, to suppress bribery and treating, and the punishment provided would be of force quite adequate to prevent the commissiou of these offences if there was a reasonable hope that discovery would follow perpetration with anything like the same

certainty that prevails with ordinary crime. At the outset there is this difficulty, the briber and the bribed having both broken the law, there is a joint interest in concealing what can seldom be certainly known without one or the other betraying his fellow criminal, and, whatever the result may be in other respects, proclaiming his own shame. Thus a perverse ingenuity proves more than a match for the most stringent enactments, and the course of demoralization, if secretly, is none the less successfully pursued, while conviction so seldom follows commission that the culprits enjoy practical exemption from puuishment I But it is not alone by the coarse and palpable agencies of gold or driulc that electoral purity is attacked. These can only be used with the most depraved portion of the people. The grievance more generally felt is the use of undue influence in its various forms. Whenever the question has been discussed in this colony the supporters of the j present system have uniformly dwelt onj the prosperous condition of the working classes and their entire disregard for the opinions of their employers, who, it is asserted, are not in a position to exert any pressure. This may have been true at an earlier date ; to speak of it as the same now displays either a total ignorance of the glut of labour unhappily existing in many districts, or else it can be nothing less than a wilful attempt to mislead. We have all seen men able and willing to work who could not obtain it, while those who have been throughout so fortunate as to have constantly possessed the opportunity of earning their living must, we think, have been under some tie to those who furnished them the means of doing so. A master tradesman may not say, "If you do not vote for Mr. A. I shall discharge you." It has been found sufficient to intimate that if a certain candidate has not the support of master and men, the means of continuing the business will be withdrawn and employment cease. The sturdy independence of the working man may be fully admitted without requiring the absurd flattery of asserting that every member of that class will always maintain his political integrity in the polling-booth, though it may lead to the loss of his children's bread. This may at times be done ; to expect it as an invariable rule is exacting too great a sacrifice of human feelings. It is not only the man of hard labour who is the victim of coercive measures ; there is at all times a large class of tradesmen who, having extended their business beyond the means at their command, or who, Buffering from a temporary depreasion in trade, are compelled to obtain an extension of credit from those with whom they are dealing ; or who, still more unfortunate, have to resort to persons willing for a consideration to endorse their bills or to make small advances of money. Here the pressure is all powerful. No threat is required, no frank statement that further credit will be refused unless certain conditions are complied with. It is enough when the creditor asks for a vote and presses the claim of his party, for it to be known that a refusal of what is unfairly and unjustly called a " favour" would lead to the denial, probably in a few days or weeks, of the means wherebythe other lives. As with every evil, doubtless punishment will fall at last most heavily on the wrong doer whose disregard of the rights of others earns for himself a lasting tribute of mingled scorn and hatred. Scorn from the independent even when their opinions are the same ; hatred from those whose poverty consents to what their will refuses.