THE New Zealand Herald. SPECTEMUR AGENDO. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1875.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XII, Issue 4398, 17 December 1875, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. SPECTEMUR AGENDO. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1875.

The election for the Mayor of Auckland, yesterday, was noteworthy as being the first election under the new Act confiding the power to the whole of the ratepayers instead of as heretofore to the Council. As a recognition of the principle of "direct" control for which we have always contended in all public affairs, we hail the new practice as a great improvement on the old, and feel that the Mayor of Auckland can now, for the first time, consider that he is truly the elected chief of the city. Nor has the result been in any respect other than satisfactory. In Mr. Prime'and'Mr. Tonks we have two excellent citizens, both highly respected, and between whom the choice was not easy. The great majority gained by Mr. Tonks was due not only to liis own merits, but to a feeling that offices of this kind should not become the appanage of any single man. We heartily congratulate Mr. Tonks on his success, but we are sure we express public feeling in saying that Sir. Prime leaves office with the respect of all classes, and may look back on his year of Mayoralty with satisfaction. He closes the old system. It will remain for Mr. Tonks to vindicate the new, and we have no doubt that the vindication in his hands will be safe and conclusive.

It is also worth noting that while in politics there is a loud cry to assimilate our institutions as much as possible to those of England, we are casting aside the oldest of precedents in municipal affairs. Few of our readers are probably aware of what that municipal system, as existing for centuries in London, really is. This want of knowledge will not be surprising, for we find it stated in an article on the subject in the London Daily News, that very few Englishmen, out of London proper, know anything about it. The Court of Aldermen, who elect the Lord Mayor of London, are bound by old custom to appoint the senior alderman unless there bo some very strong objection. Alderman Cotton, who has just been elected, because alderman for Lime-street Ward in 18GC. The late Lord Mayor, his predecessor, was elected an alderman in 1804, and Lord Mayor Cotton's, therefore, will be, as a matter of course, Alderman Boden, elected for the ward of Bishopsgate in 1868. It is the custom for the livery men to choose two names of aldermen who have not passed the chair. They invariably take the two of oldest standing, and the Court as invariably elect these two. There is thus a regular order of succession, and the instance is a very striking one of the absurdity of blindly applying to our own policy any system merely because it is English, forgetting that we have none of the traditions, none of the old customs, and none of the social conditions by which the English system, political and municipal, is practically governed. From alderman to sheriff, from sheriff to Lord Mayor, the line of succession is practically unbroken. If we may judge by the article referred to, there is a growing dissatisfaction to this system, as being, what JMi\ Wi Maihe te Rangihaheke, in his late election address, calls "behind the age." In the first place, the Lord Mayor of London is the representative only of the 75,000 inhabitants of the old city, or about a forty-fifth part of the population of the real metropolis. The anomaly dees not end here. The last election for Castle Baynard Ward brought. 241 electors (out of 382 oil the Ward roll) to the poll. Mr. Haclley cast 121 votes and Mr. Cockerell 120. Thus, when Mr. Hadley arrives at the Mayoralty, he will have been put there virtually by only 121 electors to represent the great kernel of the great metropolis, and to fill, in the eye of the world, the great post of Lord Mayor of London. The whole number of electors on the roU of the 26 wards into which old London is divided, form but a small fraction of the population of the modern metropolis, but even of that small fraction the Lord Mayor only represents, by " direct election," one single ward and the time-honored custom to which his 25 colleagues have for centuries conformed.

lii ignorance of these conditions, or, if not in ignorance, wilfully keeping tliein out of sight, a party among ourselves has long fought for a continuance of the election of Mayor by the City Council, on the ground of its being an old-established custom that has worked well in England, and must work as well here. The common sense and the sound instincts of the electors have revolted at the practice. They see how little it is suited to our own condition, and how certain it is to engender a close and caste feeling among Councillors themselves. Men outside, seeking to gain the suffrage of their fellow-citizens, have raged against thp practice till admitted to the charmed circle. Then their tactics and their views change. They feel themselves belonging to the privileged circle, and they feel that unless they conform to the current feeling of that circlo, their chances of reaching the higher office are poor indeed. So they soon feel the error of their former ways and become converted to the glories of a system under which " the noble old English corporation has flourished and been ever foremost in upholding the liberties of the people." , Even: now . that the change has come, we owe' it not to any action' of the" Corporation—scarcely- to any action of the citizens themselves. It', comes to us from a young aspirant in the political world whose colonial birth and , colonial training have prevented liis idolisation of any institution not suited to j

our plain circumstances. It is to Mr. Sheehan the change is due and in connection with it his name should not be forgotten- It is a substitution of the principle of the "direct" control of the people for the "indirect" control they formerly exercised through their several representatives in the • Council. The change has taken place so immediately under our eye, and the consequences are so manifest in their full import, that its greatness, and the . re-distribution of power it involves, are visible to all. The quietness with which it has been effected, and the perfect order with which the proceedings under the ballot were conducted yesterday, are proofs that the new system is in complete accord with our circumstances, We doubt whether there will be one-fiftieth part of the heart-burnings and petty jealousies resulting from this open, direct election, that there have been from the close elections of the past. The successful candidate will be cheered, and the defeated candidate will feel that he has been fairly, openly, and honourably beaten. The ratepayers will feel that the power is now directly in their own hands, and that they can always make that power felt. They will no longer find themselves foiled by intrigues and by the esprit de corps to which every close or privileged body must in the end succumb. Is there nothing in the proceedings of yesterday, and in the lesson to be derived from them, applicable to our political as well as to our municipal affairs 1 Are we blindly to adopt English precedents without the safeguards of a grand history, noble traditions, and timehonoured customs, with which English precedents are surrounded 1 And are we, while standing to the principle of " direct control" in municipal affairs, to abandon that principle and substitute for it the rule of a privileged assembly, and of those whom it may elect, as the higher domain of politics in which the interests are the personal independence and the political equality of the people.

It would appear that we have not yet heard the end of the unseemly squabblings which took place between Sir Juliu3 Vogel on the one side and the Crown Agents and Dr. Featherston on the other. It will be remembered that the Crown Agents and Dr. Featherston were, with Sir Julius Vogel, named agents for raising the four million loan, and that Sir Julius quarrelled with his co-agents, or they with him. The result was bitter recrimination, and great complaint was made to the Ministry here. The Crown Agents and Dr. Featherstone wrote a letter, which they despatched to the colony, and in which they spoke somewhat strongly respecting the conduct of Sir Julius VogeL That gentleman now makes complaint that this letter should have been sent without his seeing it, and also apparently finds fault with his colleagues, for having published it. The fact of their doing so was somewhat freely commented on at the time, and was accepted as proof that some of the Ministers would not have objected to get rid of Sir Julius Vogel altogether. Into such family disputes, however, we cannot enter too minutely. A cablegram from Sir Julius states that he has made an arrangement with the Bank of England, by which that institution inscribes and manages .New Zealand stock. This means, we presume, that the Bank of England takes charge of a book, in which the names of the holders of New Zealand stock are inscribed, to facilitate transactions, and to avoid the present practice of issuing debentures liable to be purloined or lost. The difficulty in having such a book—similar to that in which English Consols are inscribed—has chiefly been in getting some well-known body to take the responsibility of keeping it, and of meeting any losses that might result from carelessness orfraudin making transfers. This is the function which the Bank of England will, we presume—of course for a consideration,—undertake. Lastly, we are told that Sir Julius left England in the Somersetshire, on November 15. The Somersetshire is one of the line of direct steamers to Melbourne, and as she would take somewhere about 5S or 59 days, she will reach Melbourne about the 9th of January. This would not enable Sir Julius to catch the Hero ; and as he may have business in Melbourne or Sydney, in all probability he will not reach these shores until towards the end of January.