The Southland Times. PUBLISHED DAILY. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, JANUARY 11.

Southland Times, Issue 3295, 11 January 1879, Page 2

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED DAILY. Luceo Non Uro. SATURDAY, JANUARY 11.

: v " : '':»-..:.:.- .;•::-- ' -'.. ' ' i;- ; '. A con which, is, attheFsanifetiine tender and clear-sightedj is a crown to tiie ;^ possessor^ ; but an • overscrupulous and^ tuienligntened conscience is an intolerable eVil.' Ttie ij . outcome of the one is a ;robust moralityV /the product of the other a feeble scepticism. We are called on every now and} again; to mark this distinction by the hesitation ex'MbHed^by; cer£ain?in&yi exercise-oftneir electoral; rights, f These 'are -men often" -whose understandings you can reach, but who are possessed by a" morbid sensitiveness which counteracts the .; witness of understandings. Their scruples are connected with a peculiarity in our electoral statute. Everyone knows that it is from an interest in property that one title to vote in New Zealand spriiigs, but it is not so clearly recognised that the more fact of an interest in property does not constitute the righti The ownership of half a country would not, -of itself, confer the title, and the title might; remain after the last acre had been swept away. The right is created by the entry of a name in a public record. Thereafter — and this is the fact to be observed — -whenever a vote may be tendered, ria question of property can be brought into consideration, the statute expressly providing that so long as the name remains on the roll, the right of voting remains with it. Men often speak unwittingly of having lost their 4^ a^ nca tioii, : A nieaning that they have parted with their , property, on the strength of which their names were placed on the register. But this is to confound the condition which led to their becoming voters with the condition that makes them cease to be voters. The two are perfectly distinct. The law does not say that a man loses his qualification to vote when he loses his property. It says that he loses it when his name is erased from, the roll. The fart that property is changing hands every day," and that the electoral rolls are altered only at stated intervals, is a proof that the statute contemplated the franchise surviving the original condition of the holder. This is, so far, an answer to the argument of intention on the part of the framers of -the statute, but such an ..argument can be more fully answered by a reference to the home country, where it was not intended that, a voter should retain his privileges after he had ceased to own or occupy property, and where the intention therefore was expressed in the law. It is inconceivable that, with such an example before them, our legislators should have committed the- blunder of enacting that an individual who was simply enrolled should vote as long %% he continued so, when they really meant that a separate unexpressed quax ification should also attach to him. It may appear strange that the franchise should be suffered to outlive any one condition of its origin, but this is not the matter in dispute. The question is not one of politics, nor yet of 'ethics, but simply concerning the interpretation of a statute. "We have to look a little more closely, however, at the position of voters who, placed on the roll by virtue "of their holding property in freehold or leasehold, have ceased to have an interest in such - property. The law has declared that persons in this position at a given time are liable to have their , names struck off the list of voters, on proof of the circumstance of dispossession- being laid 'before the revising officer. The right to vote in case of such persons thus becomes voidable, but that is all. It does not become void until the action we have described has been taken in the Registration Court. But the mere fact of the voidableness of the right has an alarming sound to sensitive ears. The title seems to have become weakened by exposure -to such a fate, and appears an instrument that will i hardly endure to be resolutely and confidently There could not be a greater mistake. By having become merely liable to extinction, the right has lost no element of its strength. - It will bear any strain, and, up to the moment when the blow may be struck that will deprive it of existence, is as sound and available as ever. ' - So much for the legal standing of those voters who -.lack the .imaginary support of property in present possession, and whose title is the naked one of a place on" the electoral roll. This legal position they may acknowledge is unassailable, but -they- distinguish, and have the persuasion, many of them, that their title fails them at the bar of conscience. Surely, however,. as , we have hinted already, the office of conscience in a matter of- this sort is simply to subject them to the voice of law. , It must be plain that in a question of municipal right there can be no authority but that of the statute, and that a title good in law and bad in morality is a contradiction and an absurdity., There are some rights natural' and- inherent which! it is the

business of law to regulate and modify, and these can never cease to be questions of morality apart from law. But the franchise is not one of them. No man is born with the right of choosing a political representative.. This is a pure and absolute creation of law — of law that ordains how it shall originate, on what terms it shall subsist-, and by what process it shall terminateT In the exercise of this privilege no qualification that may appear fitting or necessary merely to our sense of reason and equity should have any. weight. The conditions on which it is suspended may appear arbitrary, unsound, or impolitic, but this is of no moment. The mere dictum of the statute, however it may traverse our most -cherished "convictions, must, in the courts alike of law and conscience, be conclusive and supreme. ' •