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Timaru Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 12022, 23 March 1903, Page 2

The New Zealand Alliance have been endeavouring to extract a, promise from the Premier that he will not allow the Newtown Returning Officer who conducted the local option poll at that place to act in the same capacity at the election of the Licensing Committee. Quite recently the Rev. F. W. Isitt, the secretary of the Alliance, wrote lo the Premier, asking him to receive ;i deputation which desired to lay before him " the excessive gravity of the position at Newtown." The following is an extract from the Premier's reply :

I wondei'i what would every right-thinking person in ihe colony say to the Piemier instructing the Returning Officer, who is a. statutory officer, to appear before him, whilst a. number of persons especially interested in an election proceeding, levslled complaints and charges against the said Returning Officer, neither the Premier nor the Returning Officer knowing the nature of such complaints or charges. C'arrv this to its logical conclusion, and .say it was a general election for the House instead of for a Licensing Committee, and if the Premier or any other Minister were to so far forget his responsible position and lend himself to that which might iniluence the elections, there would be a righteous outburst of indignation and condemnation from every right-thinking person in the colony. The Premier has no more light to do what has been suggested than he would have to call a judge or a magistrate before him to hear what aggrieved

persons had to say upon some cases the judge or magistrate had decided, and, owing to these decisions or actions, their fitness to. proceed with other cases was impugned. The Premier adds:—"Returning officers are statutory officers, with grave responsibilities cast -upon them, and if they fail in their duties there is a defined tribunal before which they can be brought, and they are liable to the penalties prescribed by law, and to practically ask me to place the returning officer on his trial before myself, and that in the midst of an election, does not commend itself to my sense of the proper fitness of things." This is all very well, but we can call to mind instances in which the Premier has been far less particular in his attitude towards officers exercising judicial functions. However, we applaud the stand which he has taken on the present occasion. It occurs to us that if the conduct of the Isewtown Returning Officer was as desperately bad as the New Zealand Alliance allege, they might have prosecuted him.