ELECTION "SHOUTING."

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12071, 15 September 1902, Page 5

ELECTION "SHOUTING."

TREATING PRIOR TO ELECTION DAY.

[BY TJiLEGBAWI. —SPECIAL CORBKSrON'UKNT.]

Wellington, Saturday. The House was discussing the question of extending the time, when "treating'" is prohibited under the Electoral Bill, and Mr. Herri gave a few hints on the ethics of election " shouting," which, he explained, tie had got second-hand, and not from personal experience. The proposal before the House was to make " treating" an offence if indulged in between nomination day and polling day, and not only on polling day, as at present. The member for the Bay of Plenty thought this was unnecessary. It was essential (so lie was informed) that the shouting should be dona before the shoutee went to the polling booth, and then a glass of beer might, in some districts, do a lot of good. You had to strike while the iron was Lot. If not, those best informed told him that anything spent before election day was simply waste of money. Mr. Napier thought the law should be allowed to remain as at present. It had worked very well, and had suppressed all bribery and corruption. " Oh, oh," chorused the House., but Air. Napier insisted that elections were- purer in this colony than in any part of the Empire. Mr. Hogg did not set much store upon the efficacy of beer. He said he had often heard the advice given, "Go and drink the other fellow's beer as much and as long as you like, but when you go to the poll, be sure and vote for the right man." He scouted the idea that the hornyhanded could be deflected from the paths of political rectitude by a libation. " The working men," he added, with conviction, "are not such a degraded class that they can be bought over by beer or spirits or coffee."

Mr. Hutcheson admitted the member for Auckland knew a lot, but said there was a. lot of things he didn't know, and one of those war, the effect of a cup of tea at other times then election day. To point his moral, Mr. Hutcheson told an ungallant story about the leader of a women's political organisation not far from the windy city, who, when complaining about the paucity of the attendance of her flock at meetings during the slack season, sniffed in the air and expressed the opinion that " a cup of tea would fetch them brutes at any time." Mr. Tanner, who thought Mr. Napier was looking at things through rosecoloured spectacles, spoke about threegallon kegs of beer (he was precise about the measurement) being left in drains near where men were working, 'and of mysterious stories of selected wines and spirits reaching the private addresses of certain electors.