BULLER DISTRICT ELECTION.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 584, 23 November 1869, Page 2

BULLER DISTRICT ELECTION.

DECLARATION OF THE POLL. The Returning Officer, Dr Giles, at twelve o'clock on Saturday, and in the Court-house, AVestport, declared the result of the polling for the election of two members for the Buller district in the Provincial Council. He declared Mr Eugene J. O'Conor and Mr Alexander Reid to have been duly elected.

Mr O'Conor addressed those present. He said : Mr Returning Officer and Electors—Custom has established the rule by which I now appear first to address you, and certainly the first use I shall make of that privilige is to thank you for the honor which has conferred it. I accept it as a mark of your approval for my past public conduct. It shall be an incentive to future exertions on your behalf. One decided benefit has already been conferred through this coniesled election. It has aroused, if not created, public opinion. On last Saturday, the day of nomination, I gave you a tolerably succinct and elaborate view of my impressions concerning the wants of this district. From that day to polling-day, only two clear days intervened. That time was insufficient, but it was entirely devoted to what I may be allowed to call my electioneering campaign. That wa3 necessarily sharp and short; I may also add that it has proved decisive. At the commencement it soon became plain to me that a most "independent," " respectable," but determined ciique were hard at work not so much for either of the other candidates as against me. They also early showed that truth, honor, and discretion were alike to be trampled under foot by them in their frantic attemps to run me down. Thanks to your support, these demoniac efforts failed. 1 leave you to guess all that was said against me upon the Northern Terraces. You will form some idea of that when I read to you this bill which was printed for circulation there. I regret that a sense of duty impels me to do so. I assure you the task is extremely unpleasant to me. I would rather pass it in silence. But I must read it that I may refute the calumny, and testify my abhorrence of the sentiments which alone could inspire so vile a production. [Mr O'Conor read from a small handbill these sentences :—" To the Electors of the Northern Terraces. Who fought with the Progress Committee ? —O'Conor. Who fought with the Athenaeum Committee? O'Conor Who fought with the Hospital Committee ?—O'Couor. Who told the people to vote for Akersten, thereby selliug the Coast?—O'Conor. Who tried to upset every movement for the

Rood of the District? —O'Conor."] The first question aud answer implies that I acted against the Progress Committee. Now the truth is I am one of those who first established it. The members of that Committee always worked harmoniously with me and I with them. On the occasion of our very last meeting I acted as their Chairman. We then gave up because we realised the fact of our inutility. Next I am accused of fighting with the Athenaeum Committee. Gentlemen, it was through my intervention that the graut was obtained which established that institute. I called together the first meeting here upon the subject. I have remained a member of that Committee ever since. A very short time ago I had the pleasure of giving my assistance in the selection of a fresh supply of books. Some of them, I am sure, you will approve of if you patronise the institute. As to the Separation Committee I will tell you what part I took on that. Again ic was 1 who first publicly enunciated that policy. And Mr Tyler was, at my suggestion, appointed a member and named Chairman of the Progress Committee that he might assist us in working out the necessary details. I differed with the majorty of the Separation Committee on two points—first as to the petition itself, second as to the manner of obtaining signatures. I now wish as many others do, that my suggestions were taken. It would certainly have saved your petition from the slur cast upon it in Wellington, had every signature been properly verified. Notwithstanding this little difference I remained to the last cooperating with the foremost in the cause, and anxious for its success. As to the Hospital Committee, I was among the first who wrought for its establishment. I left that Committee purely upon personal grounds. My sympathy has always remained with it and with the Hospital. Those who assert that I have ever opposed any charitable or useful institution in our midst aro uttering a base calumny. They speak falsely, to their own knowledge and to yours. As to that miserable and threadbare clap-trap about Alcersten I repeat now what I have doue and said before and after the occurrence—my only object was to secure the unanimity of the Coast that we might appear respectable for our union and our compactness, whether in victory or defeat. Need I tell you that I never was a partizan of Akersten's ? I assure you I did not or do not care three straws for either Alcersten, Gibbs, or Curtis.—(Hear, hear.) The last question we may take as a summing up of the whole. Jt is the monster lie in which all the others aro embodied with any imaginary additions that mendaciousness can bring to light. The manner of your receiving these calumnies is a sufficient answer ; 3 our reply has been to place my name in the first position triumphant on the poll. That answer is an ample satisfaction. 1 forgive these personal injuries; they are answered ; they arc punished j I now wish to forget "them. But there yet remains one paragraph fraught with ominous meaning; it is intended to arouse amongst us once again the demon of discord and party feeling—"Miners on the Terraces, prove yourselves men, and don't let O'Conor beat you at Addison's Flat." Whoever wrote that paragraph would, for the satisfaction of his diabolical envy and revengeful spite, pit miner against miner in our district—wouli rouse feelings of distrust, of suspicion, of hatred, amongst men toiling in the same pursuits and often dependent for their lives on each other'sassistauce. I do not say that such an incendiary deserves to be hanged or drowned, but he ought to bo publicly whipt. I will dwell no longer upon the subject; but, before it is dismissed from your minds I must tell you that I hold Mr Alexander lieid entirely blameless of these things. I do not believe that he was aware of them auy sooner than I was myself. From my personal acquaintance with his character I deem it impossible that he could descend so low. I have looked upon him as an honest and honorable man. I do so still, and I am well pleased that you have given me so able a colleague. I am charged with speaking hardly against the Wcsiport Times. The Wcstfnrt Times is my enemy. It never loses an opportunity of casting a hurtful insinuation against me. I have many times been subjected to the process of grinding in their mill. But I am yet whole; the pressure they bring is not sufficient. I will now speak to you of the polling booths. Against tiiat on the Caledonian many things can be urged. Besides its unfair position, it was held in the house of an opposing candidate, and he presided there, under circumstances very much calculated to influence his election and prejudice mine. In Westport also something took place which was discreditable and calculated to act as coercion against those who were inclined to vote for me. I allude to the presence of a person in the booth whose positionand circumstances forbade his being there—you know to whom I refer; I need not mention names. The manner in which the electoral roll was compiled was also against me. There are several on that roll who voted against me who have no earthly right to be there. In fact, it was an imposition for them to put their names upon it feigning a qualification which they had not. But this " open voting" has, I think, brought home to all a condemnation of that system. It leaves open a wide door to corruption, and and drao-s with it an ocean of ill-will and jealousy.

We want the ballot system. I hope the next election will see it in force. It may be interesting to you to hear the wants of these out-districts enumerated as manifested to me on my electioneering tour. It is my intention to carry the list with me as a memorandum when the Provincial penny whistle calls me to that festive scene in which I am to take part as one of your representatives. Beginning with German Terrace, there is a road wanted there to connect that thriving locality with the main track ; in fact there should be a road along the Northern Terraces running parallel with the lead Generally the miners on the Terraces complain that they do not receive due assistance from the survey department. They would be glad to see a school established in their midst. They desire to have a burying ground nearer to them. They are tirod of paying toll at the Orawaiti. They condemn the present mining rules as defective and unsuitable; they desire that they should be remodelled ; they wish to be consulted when that is done, and when new rules are made under the sauction of Government they hope they will be made binding on all. They approve of that plan which I before submitted to you of assisting prospectors. They complain of the great hardship of being perpetually brought to town and courts of law for the settlement of all their disputes or that of their rights. On Addison's Flat there is a public and very well-conducted and numerously attended school. It is in a great measure supported by public subscription. The Government have been applied to time after time, but they have denied all assistance. Addison's also require a burial ground. It is monstrous injustice to compel them to bring the mortal remains of a comrade down here to bury him in the most unsuitable spot in the district for such a purpose, with an encroaching sea threatening it, as it now lies within a chain of high water mark. There are a few other subjects to which I would refer, but that I have spoken of them often on previous occasions. I will conclude as I began, thanking you for the gratifying position I occupy. I thank the miners on the terraces. They had a long and arduous journey over a rough country. I hope it will be in my power to save them many a long and idle journey. I thank the independent electors of the town They did well, opposed as they were by the full weight of official antagonism and our Leviathan Press. As to my friends on the Flat, I may well say more power to them ; they will never have occasion to turn their backs on mo. It shall be my pride to prove myself always worthy of their trust When my countrymen confide a trust they do it honestly and in good faith. But they are quick to resent the injury if they are betrayed, as it has often been their fate fo be. Again, electors, I thank you all for the honor you havo done me. I hope my services will secure to you some return. Mr Reiu said he desired first, because they were nearest and present, to thank those of the electors of Westport who had voted for him, and especially those who had, either through principle or personal friendship, gone to expense and exertion on his behalf. But those to whom, if his voice could reach them, he ought to give greatest thanks were the miners of the Northern Terraces, of whom so many had warmly worked in his interest, although personally he was to the majority comparatively unknown. He even thanked the electors of* Addison's Flat, not on account of the numbers who had voted for him, but because o? their expressions of confidence in him, and of their willingness to vote for him under other circumstances than those in which they were, in this election, mutually placed. He regretted that, while thus thankful to many, he should feel disposed to " damn with faint praise" some well-meant but ill-directed actions of a friend or two ; and, without any regret whatever, except for their own sakes, he was disposed to despise those who, assuming to be his friends, had acted otherwise. He condemned himself, not for sins of commission so much as sins of omission, but for which, he was conceited enough to believe, he would have stood in a greatly better position in the polling. His excuse for these omissions was the shortness of the interval between the nomination and the poll, and the impossibility of business engagements being neglected even in the fever of an election contest. "With his present position he was, however, perfectly satisfied, for it was a position which, throughout this short contest, he had altogether despaired of attaining. Why he despaired he would explain, and he thought some explanation was otherwise necessary on account of the invidious position in which he had, all along, felt himself placed. The fact was that, when Mr O'Conor was named as a candidate along with himself, he personally thought the selection was, on both sides, a somewhat wise one, as tending to represent and blend two elements and interests which, fictionally or otherwise, might bo said to exist in the community. There were others who were not disposed to let the election be simply a " walk over, " as previous elections in the district had been, and who seemed to find some particular pleasure in giving Mr O'Conor a " tussle." lie personally succeeded iu preventing the initiation of this in one instance, and, even when Mr Braithwaite was finally induced to come forward, he protested against its doubtful propriety—chiefly, ho must say, from the fear that it would be his own fate to be ousted in any

contest that might ensue. He appealed now to his own mover and seconder to corroborate that he objected to the initiation of any real or nominal opposition to Mr O'Conor.— (Mr Humphrey : Hear, hear.) He was not ignorant of the fact that, among some, Mr O'Conor enjoyed what he might be allowed to call an indifferent repute as to his capacity of working sweetly with others. Mr O'Conor's traditional reputation was that, after working well up to a certain point in public bodies, he suddenly went off at a tangent—becoming, some said, rather bounceable. This he (Mr Reid) had not yet personally experienced —he never anticipated such a thing in a situation where they would be mutually working for the interests of a district—but, with all respect for Mr O'Conor, he would only say that, to " best" him by bouncing, he would have to bounce very hard. Being disposed to encourage rather than to discourage some special mining representation, he did nofurge to extremity his own selfish objections to Mr Braithwaite coming forward—indeed, he would rather have retired in his favor —but he accepted, with faint heart, his position, and allowed himself to be nominated with the feeling that each man should go to the constituency on his merits. This was his feeling when he went to address the first meeting at Giles Terrace, but at the close of that meeting, which he only knew of after it had been called, he received a "staggerer." He found himself in placards posted on the walls, and which had been forwarded to the terraces after he left town, but without any acquiescence on his part, coupled with Mr Braithwaite as the candidate in whose favor the Northern Terraces should " show their strength." He recognised this at once, in an electioneering point of view, as an indiscretion. He knew that that was just the " ticket " that Mr O'Conor wanted, and if Mr O'Conor had required it, and had more regard for the printer than he had, he should have had a hundred of those at once " struck off" for distribution on Addison's Flat. He (Mr Reid) had necessarily to accept the situation thus given to him publicly and in print—no words of his could have gainsaid it—it was his inevitable alternative—and it might be that, against any harm which it did him on Addison's, he gained good by it through the advantage of Mr Braithwaite's introduction and friendship. Thus committed, he did visit part of the Terraces in company with Mr Braithwaite. He knew now that had hu made use of that introduction, and of the generous conduct of the men on the Terraces, he might have dispensed with support from other • districts, but he desired not to represent a party or a district, but the general interests. He went, of course, to Addison's compromised, knowing that, whatever he might say for or against Mr O'Conor, he would only he believed one way so long as the Braithwaite-cum-Reid bill could he flaunted in his face. What he said to those of influence was that, backing Mr O'Conor as they would do, and voting for Braithwaite as they might do on the Terraces, he, as poor Pil Garlic, was likely to be left out in the cold, and he only wanted a fair show. If he had not got it, his expectations were not disappointed. He was sorry that he himself disappointed the expectations of others—the residents of German Terrace, by failing to be present at a meeting there, and he was more than anyone disappointed, on returning to that Terrace, to find the small placard or " squib" to which Mr O'Conor had just referred. He repudiated it altogether. As soon as he saw some copies of it he tore the sanguinary thing down. It was a mistake for which neither he nor any of his were responsible. To his reading it was, so far as it related to Mr O'Conor, rather in that candidate's favor, for, in speaking of a man as fighting with an Hospital or Athenaeum Committee, it must be implied that he fought for the Committee, not against it. However, the squib-writer's and his ideas of grammar might be different. The part to which he objected, as repugnaut to his own and proper feelings, was the pitting of one locality against another—though, really, the thing-was a very harmless and feeble invention altogether —an invention much more calculated to harm him than to harm Mr O'Conor, and Mr O'Conor possessed all the art to give it a turn that way. He did not deny that he himself might have occasionally said in conversation—" Don't let the boys down south have it all their own way;" but class or national feeling was a ridiculous importation in a Provincial Council election, and, notwithstanding this stupid " squib," there might reasonably be a diversity of judgment as to the side on which those feelings had most been shown. He felt that he was standing there disavowing mere trifles compared with what others, if they were equally generous, would have disavowed or never have said.

Mr O'Conor after some interruption as to any question being put, and after Mr Eeid had expressed his willingness to answer any question, asked if it was the case that the handbills referred to had been distributed by the agent for the Wcstport Times? Mr Retd said that, for all he knew, they might have been, but certainly not as agent for the Wcsiport Times, or in any ca pacify associated with that paper. He knew nothing of the writer: and printers printed for payment, not sentiment. Mr O'Coxor said he was aware that Mr Reid could have known nothing

of the authorship of the bills, as h was at the time at Addison's Elat. Mr Beid said that what he onl; wanted to refer to further —and thi brought him to his intimated desire ti resign was the position he hel< towards Mr Braithwaite. Of coursi there had been a cry initiate< and encouraged by those who kuev nothing of the circumstances, am did not care to know, that th< Northern Terraces had been " sold"— that Mr John Braithwaite had beer "thrown over." Nothing coidd be more contrary to the fact. Mi Braithwaite had neither sought nor so far as he knew, expected any greal support from the town, and so far as he (Mr Beid) knew of how the election was going in town, the fact was that he knew nothing at all about it. Mr Braithwaite's own words, often repeated, were that if he did not go in for his own district he did not care for entering the Council at all; and when he expressed any confidence as to the result, he (Mr Eeid) had warned him not to be too sanguine, but to believe, as he believed, that the "game was a losing one (as such games were in more ways than one) and to act accordingly. He could scarcely believe that such a feeling as was represented existed on the Terraces, or on the part of Mr Braithwaite—he knew that Mr Braithwaite had sacrificed himself in his cause—but his belief and his information were at present at variance. He chose to be sensitive on such a point, and he would not enter the Council with any slur or suspicion that, for his seat, he had been party to the sacrifice of a friend. Compromised as he had been by a succession of other circumstances over which he had no control, he would Dot take his seat without the faith that he had a larger amount of the moral support of the district than the existence of such an insinuation would imply. He would probably visit the Northern Terraces early to thank the electors and to ascertain accurately us to the existence of any such feeling which a few were industriously reporting to prevail ; but he repeated that, with any feeling on the part of Mr Braithwaite or the constituency, contrary to the fairness of his election, he must resign, and allow a fresh election to be made. Mr Eeid concluded (or, at least, he ought to have concluded) by thanking bis audience for listening patiently to his wearisome explanatory remarks. Me O'Cojtor proposed a vote of thanks to the Returning Officer. Mr Beid seconded the vote of thanks, and in doing so he expressed the hope that, at future elections, the Returning Officer would, by appointing more or better situated pollingplaces, facilitate the exercise of the franchise by the mining community. The trouble and expense which had been imposed upon the miners on this occasion were unfavorable to a full exercise of the franchise, and unfair to the electors. Under any other circumstances than the favorable physical conditions under which the election had taken place, the result to any or all of the candidates might have been materially affected. As it was there was an expenditure of time and energy, in men trotting from one end of the terraces to the other, which probably far exceeded tho whole value of the election to the district, taken in its most favorable aspect. He knew that the Caledonian had, on this occasion, been solely selected, on account of its traditional name as the northern polling-place,but he knewalso that it only required the Beturning Officer'd attention to be directed to the matter to secure superior provision being made another time. The Beturxixo Officer, in acknowledging the vote of thanks, said he had intended to have referred to the matter before the meeting dispersed. The fact was that the Caledonian was the oldest terrace and that which had, in time past, been the polling place; and as they knew that officialism was apt to linger a little behind the march of events, the necessary change had not been made in time for this election. He thought the Orawaiti township would be the most convenient situation in future, but he would take care that such a polling-place would be selected as would suit best the convenience of the majority of the population.