BALCLUTHA SCHOOL COMMITTEE ELECTION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 10035, 28 April 1894, Page 2 (Supplement)

BALCLUTHA SCHOOL COMMITTEE ELECTION.

TO TKB EDITOIi.

Sin,—A good deal has be«n said and written about the impropriety of members of the Ministry exerting themselves and using their influence in favour of the return of candidates whom, from their own point of view, they regard as more eligible than their opponents, and certain members of the House of Representatives have been both loud and emphatic in their denunciation of this sort of thing; and rightly so, say I. The arguments u;ed in ease 3 ot this kind apply, of course, with equal force to members of the Otago Education Board and school committee elections. It applies with much greater force when there are certain wheels within wheels, and when tho member of the Education Board who so exerts himself in favour of the return of a particular ticket—a ticket that is drawn out at and according to his own suggestions—is also a member of the House of Representatives. Yet, in the usually quiet and peaceful village of Balclutha. which baaats of its district high Eohool, such a scene might have been witnessed, and as a matter of fact was witnessed by those in the inner circle, as would have made tho hair of the rising generation stand on end had they been ODly able to appreciate it, But the gentleman referred to was successful —that is, he succeeded in getting his ticket returned, or at any rate sufficient of it to enable him to feel eminently satisfied with himself and all around him. The writer does not for one moment suggest that the men returned to superintend the educational interests of our young hopefuls in general, and the Balclutha District High School in particular, are cot all good men and true. Including, as tho nowly elected committee does, the names of such men as John Dunne, John M'Neil, John M'Corley—mayors and es-mayors of Balclutha, all of them,- from time immemorial—ho would behold indeed who would suggest such a thing. But members of Parliament who are such paragons of public morality should not, as members of the Otago Education Board, dothoso things which as members of Parliament they so unhesitatingly condemn in members of tho Ministry. They may right themselves in the eyes of the publio who are slow in such matters, bat in the eyes of their friends never. But once shake a man's friends' confidence in his reputation as a single-minded, h-JtKst man, whose integrity they rtgard as above iii-^iuiau, and the public will not stand by him lung.—l am, &c, Balelutlu, April 26

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