THE WAIRARAPA SEAT.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1291, 26 November 1896, Page 21

THE WAIRARAPA SEAT.

While the Liberal candidate is fighting J the campaign with energy and pluck,"he is pelted, we notice, with noxious garbage. That being the kind of thing to expect from the National Ass. and its hirelings, we must admire the consistency of the party. We expected them to be as bad as they can, bad as they are. When family jars are used for political purposes, when domestic privacy is invaded, without a shadow of justification, when a man's -okes, however clumsy they may be, are turned into crimes, and so trumpeted forth, the depth of the political gutter is reached. It all reminds us of the skit on electioneering in America written by Mark Twain. Twain was a candidate for something, Twain had led a perfectly honest and absolutely uneventful life, Twain was quite unknown to the public. Nevertheless, Twain was greeted on his first platform with cries of "Libertine/' and confronted by forty-five children of various colours, who greeted him in well-traine d chorus as " Papa/' Before he reached the last platform, his town was decorated with placards referring to " Twain, the body-snatcher," and handbills were circulated giving details of the manner in which he pursued his awful calling, and j particulars of the jewellery and precious j stones he was in the habit of abstracting from the tombs of the illustrious and ' sainted dead. That sort of thing draws attention away from the real issues. In a country ' district the issues are between the Government which has done the people good, and the supporters of the Governments which did them harm. Of old, the property tax fell upon improvements, as well as all property, and, j the improvements on small properties be- I ing much larger proportionately than upon large, the valuation of the small man was ■far larger per acre than that of the large land-owner. The various rates, acting four or five times on that principle, squeezed the small man, who could pay but little, and let the large owner down lightly, though he could afford to pay much. At the same time the Customs claimed all along the line, and the larger a man's family was the more he had to pay to the State. The Liberal Government quietly took the tax off the improvements, and the lot of the small man improved [from that hour. Since then some of the necessities of life pay less, and a uniform valuation has been established. Mr Buchanan has opposed all these changes, standing up for the old order. Mr Hornsby represents the new order, which has made them and wants to make more. That is the issue.