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New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4126, 11 June 1874, Page 2

It is an occasional boast that the Province of Canterbury is, pin' excellence, tbo English Province of the Colony, representing moro than other parts the characteristics of English scenery, English homes, English habits, and English institutions. Probably it is so, but tho claim is not always a complimentary one. There bo evil and good things in England, as elsewhere, and one of tho former is, or was in times gone by, tho essentially English fashion of conducting a popular election. Tho evils of such events, now much mitigated on the native soil, seem to have been imported into Canterbury with a fond affection for the past which may contribute to the picturesque, but which certainly does not promote peace and good order. Either that, or the system of electioneering carried out in England’s sister isle has found favor among the Canterbury settlers, to the detriment of the good name of tho Province and its people. This, at least, wo are entitled to assume from tho character of a resolution recently arrived at by tire Christchurch City Council, on the subject of disturbances during electron proceedings. Unless it is implied in tiro words et cetera , there is no reference made to the utilisation or abuse, on such occasions, of addled eggs, deceased cats, or broken bricks, but the moral conditions surrounding a candidate’s nomination, and tho material articles which may surround or strike iris head, are apparently of such a character as to have elicited from the City Council a warm expression of condemnation and disapproval. With a prescience which does them credit, Christchurch City Councillors have seen, not “books in brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything,” but in “ flour, soot, and lime,” the roots of evil and tho germs of a _ possible necessity for reading tho Riot Act. These several articles, innocuous in themselves when undisturbed, and oven useful when applied to their proper purpose, are both out of place and injurious to tho composure and complexion of candidates on the public hustings, and, wise in time, tho Council of tho city of which wo speak have seen Jit to protest against their indiscriminate use as substitutes for arguments or ironical applause. They rightly fear disturbance to tiro public peace, and personal injury, as possible results of their indiscriminate use in tho public streets, and therefore, according to the reports of our contemporaries, they have resolved : “ That the attention of tho police authorities bo called by this Council to the disgraceful arid dangerous practice that prevails at all elections in this city—viz., the throwing of flour, soot, lime, etc., at candidates and their supporters,—with tiro request that decided measures bo taken to put an end to the custom before it results—under strong party feeling—in riot, destruction of property, and, possibly, of life.” How tho police are to deal with tho difficulty is not specified, but it is to be presumed that thero are enactments sufficient to sustain those limbs of tiro law in preventing tho indiscriminate distribution of “flour, soot, lime, &c.,” to say nought of eggs, &c., it there is nothing moro thar°the fact that, in certain situations, they are articles calculated to “provoke a broach of tiro peace.” If so, it is sincerely to bo hoped that on the occasion of future elections, tho citizens of Christchurch will bo induced or compelled to abandon tbo old English habits which they have transported to tiro Antipodes, lest tiro worst fears of the City Councillors bo realised, and lest in other parts of tho Colony tho influence 01 imitation should, in accord with tho modern theory of development, produce riot from Hour, destruction of property from lime, and death from soot.