POLITICAL PARTIES COMPARED.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5667, 11 September 1896, Page 6 (Supplement)

POLITICAL PARTIES COMPARED.

The Marlborouyh Ifcpress, which is a very independent journal, and often in opposition to the present Government, has a few pertinent remarks in a recent issue, the following extracts from which deserve attention : — New Zealand has had proof of both parties in power. And it is notorious that the present Government Has done more for the great masses of the people than all previous Governments put together, simply because present Ministers are' more in sympathy with the people than others have ever been. And while we recognise the desirability of an Opposition strong enough to check tendencies to autocracy, we hold that it would be a very bad thing indeed for the country if Messrs Russell, Stout, Dutlne and Newman were installed in power. Their sympathies are with those who have, not with those who have not, and who for that reason eed all the more * * * But we claim or the present Government that it has or six years past steadily endeavoured, and • not unsuccessfully, to lighten the sum of human misery, and to give everyone a chance of living, and that it has thus set higher and nobler aims before it than those that are the exclusive consideration in political economy. The work is not done yet by any means, and Ministers are fully alive to the fact. This being so, we hold it to be the bounden duty of every well-wisher of his country, regardless of all personal and private considerations, to so cast his vote on the polling-day as to strengthen the hands of Mr Seddon and his colleagues, and to further that patriotic policy which they can be trusted in the future, as in the past, single-heartedly to 'pursue.