LOCAL GOSSIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11241, 9 December 1899, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOCAL GOSSIP.

Let me have audience for a word or two. —Shakespere. The hurly-burly of the general elections are over, and King Richard has got his foot on our necks for three years more. Some people are asking him to be merciful, if strong, and reminding him that if it is sweet to have a giant's power, 'tis tyrannous to use it so. The fumes of the champagne are not yet out of his nostrils, and he is living in an atmosphere of sycophancy and flattery, which would ruin better men than Mr. Seddon. Someone told a French noble in the olden timo that even he would have to give an account (if every deed done in the body, and he replied jauntily, "That the Almighty would think twice before damning people of his quality." Whether that contingency has arrived in the history of New Zealand with regard to the Premier, I can't say.

One of the things which will have to be inquired into early in the history of Parliament is the state of the City and Suburban lolls. A Liberal Government is supposed to be an enfranchising, and not. a disfranchising Government. The stories current about the state of the rolls are most extraordinary, and would seem to be incredible if citizens do not vouch for them as true as Holy Writ. I am informed that it is estimated that from 2000 to 2500 names have been removed from the rolls, and the citizens thus disfranchised have no idea who struck them, and how it was done, than they know of the "pestilence that walketh in'darkness." Mr. William Aitken was struck off, and Mrs. Elizabeth Hendry Somervell, who voted at the former general election, on going to poll found her name removed from the roll. She has been in Auckland for 57 years successively, and owns thousands of pounds worth of property in Queen-street. Her face is as well known in this city as the town clock. To prevent any mistake, as her name had been altered previously from Somervell to Somerset, she got a friend to put her on the main roll, she states, about four months ago. After that another man came to the house inquiring about, her name being put oil the roll, and he was very anxious to know how she was going to vote. She was out when he called," and he got very little satisfaction from the person in charge on that head. He then went across the road, and called at a bouse, as she afterwards ascertained, and put down the name of the lady of the house, and her female companion. He asked them how they were going to vote. The ladv said, jestingly, " For yon, of course." He then asked' the young lady friend how she was going to vote, and she replied. " For the Opposition." On election day, the lady of the house went and voted, but the young lady, who had the temerity to say that she was going to vote " for the Opposition," found that her name had never been put on. People who would thus deceive unsuspecting women ought to get four dozen atthe triangles."

At the time when old settlers are thus disfranchised, other names are not removed, which ought to be known to anyone with the slightest knowledge of the town. The inspector of a public institution removed with his family to Wellington nearly two years ago. The gentleman was struck oil, but his wife is still on the roll. Why was " one taken, and the other left?" A clergyman in this city had three members of his family removed from the roll, 011 the ground of a report that " they had removed from the district." whereas they had done nothing of the kind. One of them was afterwards put on the Parnell roll, a district in which they did not live. On election day, settlers in Ponsonby and ill Avondale, who have been there and voted for a quarter of a century, found themselves disfranchised. Another man, a teacher, told nic he put in his claim, as written by himself, as "Jones, Edenstreet, teacher." When he looked at the roll he found it metamorphosed to "Jones, teacher Parliament-street, settler." Another .'>an informed me that an agent came round and took down his name and those of the lady of the house and her daughter. He saw the claims made out all in order. On election day he found that the daughter and himself were disfranchised. These are simply samples of the sack, which it is said can lie repeated by the score. _ How it is done no one has been able to find out, but that it is done by somebody, and that they have a strong motive for such conduct, goes without saying.

It was predicted at the general election of 1896 that the inferior House then returned would be succeeded by one infinitely inferior in every respect in 1899. That prophecy has been abundantly fulfilled. We see men of notorious reputation returned, and men who would be an honour to any Parliament ignominiously rejected. History repeats itself. Human nature is precisely, among the Forces of Disorder and Ignorance, what it was nineteen centuries ago— Not this man, but rabbits!" To show how frightfully the rolls have been manipulated, there were about 20,000 rulers on the city rolls in 1896. Since that date, as the building boom shows, there has been a steady increase of population. At the. election this week there were only about 17.000 on the roll. Where have the 3000 voters disappeared to, and the natural increment of population? One is shut up to two conclusions, either that from 2000 to 3000 have been disfranchised, or that in 1895 certain parties "robbed the cradle and the grave" to stulf the rolls. There is no getting away from these alternative conclusions. Mr. Rosser informs me that 80 of his supporters, on going to the booths, found themselves struck off, and were unable to vole for him, and the same tiling happened in the case of Mr. Fowlds. To talk of a decision of that sort as Vox populi, vox Dei, is simply blasphemy.

What may happen to a Registrar of Electors was very forcibly exemplified in the following episode:— old lady called at a booth, and said, "I want my vote!" A clerk looked over the roll, and replied, "Missus, you're not in it." "Not in it," exclaimed the irate and enraged dame, "I'll King him; I'll knock the stuffing out of him I" The humours of the election were various. Some electors struck out of the local option voting paper the first line on the paper—not the lop issue; other? calmly dropped the local option paper in the voting recess, and thus got done with it, as it was a conundrum. One dame, who it was said had a drunken husband, and gets hammered, and chucked out of a Saturday night, boasted that she voted for beer "all the way." Those who knew her life history, said a woman, who under such circumstances would vote for " the flowing bowl," ought to get kicked every night in the week. Perhaps she is like the Lancashire pitmen's wives, who think that their husbands do not love them if they do not clog them at least once a week.

Everybody will regret that, among other good men relegated to private life, by a fierce democracy, which, as of old, cried "Hosanna first, and after—Crucify," we have lost Mr. Scobie Mackenzie, whose playful and caustic satire was the delight of tlio Gallery. It is very funny to find that one of his successors can only plead that he has brought his "little awl" to the service of the country, and has never heard, apparently, of the quotation of " sticking to his last." Tommy Taylor has got the "happy despatch," but he was riding for a fall when he was barracking for old ICruger. He has not seen the last of his troubles. Mrs. Collings said at Mr. Baume's meeting at St. Benedict's that she would meet him on a public platform yet and give liim " Hail, Columbia," for, what she stated, were his libels on the police. " I was a police matron for " ear 'y. two years, and lived in the midst of .40 policemen. Look at me; I'm yet alive. Certainly she did look a monument of sparing mercy, and did not seem to have suffered from her society with the " mimbahs av the foorce," who, like Dibdin's hero, never put a hand on her save in kindness." I have seen Mrs. Collings on the rampage, and as she is thirsting for Tommy's gore, 1 would advise him to lie low for a bit, or a e friends with Mrs. Stcphenson-Wrack, who is a foeman worthy of her steel.

It is not often that the muses are invoked at an election, but Mr. Owen C'urran McGee lias been suffering from the divine afflatus, and lias thrown off " a sweet thing" in the interest of Sir Maurice o'R<jrke for Manukau. In " The Race for Manukau," he thus warbles: —

The Lawyer is a trusty steed as any horse I know. Bat Hull and Tailor's mixed his feed, and spoiled his merry go. Now Tailor makes a spurt for home, where Lawyer is unwell, And falling Shares is in a foam, Sir Maurice wins the bell. Now place the old Knight in the chair, and weigh the winner out, The race is won, and lots to snare, it never was m doubt. He is a trusty Knight, I trow, as ever sword did wield; Here s to his health, we'll drink it now, the champion of the field. I do not know what Sir Maurice thinks of the Poet Laureate, but it must he admitted he means well, and' the least that the Knight can do under all the circumstances is to give it a name," as delicately suggested in the closing lines of the 4 ' pome."

It is reported from Wellington that the Premier views his following with a somewhat rueful countenance, and would have been happier had some of them not occupied the proud position they did oil the rolls. We in Auckland have, at all events, done the light thing by him in sending our Opposition phalanx unbroken—that is, unless Mr. Bollard is capsized for Eden. But Ministers did work hard in some cases. Both Mr. Seddon and Mr. Cadman went to Ohinemuri, and the wires were tired of carrying Ministerial implorings and orders. All this was done in favour of Mr. Jackson Palmer, with success, against several fellowLiberals. However, the defeated men are expected to take it all very quietly. In the Bay of Plenty, the strongest Ministerial effort was directed to unseat Mr. Hemes. The reasons why this special trouble was taken are not very apparent, but nil those suggested are complimentary to Mr. Herries. The Premier visited some parts of Mr. Herries' district, not easily accessible, and Ministerial telegrams were flying about as thick as suowllakes. As it happened, it was all in vain.

Travelling round the booths on polling flay, I was amused at the reasons some gave for voting in a particular way. I was surprised to find that one friend of mine, who is by 110 means a teetotaler, was going to vote prohibition. His reason was. that the brewing trade was a monopoly, and he did not think that the brewers were making too much money, and that he did not think they were making such good beer as they should do. He would vote prohibition to see if that would have any effect in getting better beer. Contrasting the large vote given for no license and reduction with the small vote given to the prohibitionist champion, Mr. French, it would seem that a large number of persons voted with the prohibitionists from equally logical motives. Logic, indeed, is not a strange point at elections, although I witnessed one incident which showed that people had still some idea of that science. I was standing amongst a large group, when someone came and told us that the latest news was that Farnell had gone almost solid for prohibition, and had put Mr. Lawry at the tup of the poll!

A good story was told me the other day of a parson who had been away South attending some ecclesiastical assembly or other. He was on his return North homewards, and on leaving the steamer he tipped the cabinboy with the coin which was most familiar to him— threepenny bit. The youth was a young colonial, and seeing "The Shorter Caratches" written all over the parson's face, hauled a threepenny bit out of his pocket, and said to the parson, "Put that along with your threepenny-bit into the plate on Sunday 011 my account!" The minister was quite certain that that boy had not made " his calling and election sure."

We have been reproaching our matrons with reducing the birth-rate, but I observe a birth notice in a Southern paper which shows that one lady had "done what she could." "Brown.—At Cabbidge Beds, on November 30, Mrs. Brown, of a son (by adoption)." This is not so good as another birth notice, where the delighted father put the birth in the paper as that of a girl, and on the following day when he was less " mixed up" in his liquor, put forth another official bulletin that the child was "a boy." Whatever sex it was, it was welcome to his hearth and home.

A Sydney correspondent splinters a lance for the returning New South Wales Lancers, and, believing in the grand old maxim, " Audi Alteram Partem," I give an extract from a note which has reached me: — " It makes me very angry to read the sneers in Local Gossip, by 'Mcrcutio,' at the New South Wales Lancers who have returned, and who are by the way just now quarantined for three'weeks here, on account of a. ease of small-pox, on the Nineveh. The fellows that came back have many of them done so because their parents wanted them. In two cases a father was dying (in one the lad was just too late), anil in another a widowed mother implored her only son to return to Sydney; three others are invalided, two others rejected on account of some supposed physical defect, and only one man refused point blank. Besides which they never had a penny of Government money spent to send them Home. Their officers, and men like McArthur Onslow, raised the money by subscription, and many of the fellows paid their own expenses. And as they are mostly swells, like young Dangar and young Osborne, it is rather absurd to accuse them of astonishing Hyde Park nursemaids with the jargon of the Wooloomooloo' push.'"

A correspondent, "Apropos," writes to me respecting the note in last week's Local Gossip, saying he quite agrees with me on the comments made on the growing practice of exposing goods outside of premises, and the temptation it affords to those who have a criminal tendency, or are morally weak. A by-law dealing with the offence lias been in existence for the last 25 years, which probably, he says, our worthy judge was not aware of. At one time its provisions were enforced, and when all were placed upon an equal footing no grievance could arise. For some unknown reason, of lato no notice has been taken, and the practice has become not only a source of temptation, but a nuisance to the public. "Apropos" says, "Your comments may lead to the police authorities stopping this practice of tradesmen in puttin" temptation before their poorer neighbours. A London magistrate refused to commit under such circumstances." As Mr. Goldie has recently dug out and revived a city by-law which has been obsolete for 15 years, he might do worse than turn his attention to the enforcement of the by-law against tradesmen exposing goods for sale on the pavement in front of their premises.