Untitled

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3868, 28 July 1873, Page 2

The polling for the election of a member to fill the seat in the House of Representatives for the Bay of Islands, recently vacated by the resignation of Mr M'Leod, takes place to-day. The three candidates in the field are Mr J. S. Macfarlane, Mr Lundon, and Mr John W. Williams. With regard to the first, whatever his intrinsic merits may be, one cannot help feeling that he looks upon his candidature too exclusively in the light of a business speculation. A recent decision in a court of justice interferes with his extensive operations in the timber trade ; immediately he sets himself to consider how this interference in the future is to be obviated. The law on the subject must be altered. In order to procure this alteration in the law, it is desirable that he himself — the party most interested, and consequently best able to represent the case — should occupy a seat in the House of Representatives. The fact that no seat is vacant at present is by no means an insuperable" obstacle. No great difficulty is experienced i» finding an hon member who will make one vacant for a consideration, The consideration is given and the seat vacated, and in Mr Macfarlane's view, apparently, the whole transaction is carried through on the most unexceptionable business principles. He sees nothing whatever in it to be in the least ashamed of, but explains it with all its details to a meeting of electors whose suffrages he asks for. He makes no secret either of the reason why he took measures to cause the vacancy, or why he seeks to fill it. It is simply because he wishes to have the provisions of the common law of England which place legal difficulties in the way of the floating of timber down rivers, struck out of the Statute-book of the colony ; if he succeeds in accomplishing this " he will not regret the inconvenience and perhaps pecuniary loss which the necessary absence from his extensive business will probably entail." No doubt he will not, as such inconvenience and pecuniary loss will be amply recougod to him by the results of its accomplishment. It seems never to occur to him that his constitutents might not altogether appreciate this method of treating them as mere stalking horses, mere means towards the obtainment of their would-be representative's private ends. The other two candidates are Messrs Lundon and Williams. The former lays claims to the paternity of the resolution carried in 1871, on the motion of Mr Faruall, for the expenditure of the sum of £100,000 out of the public works loan on roads, <&o, in the district north of Auckland. If his account of the origin of the resolution is correct, he has certainly some claim on the gratitude of the electors of the district. What the public generally know of him, however, does not much recommend him for the position he seeks. Probably, ©n the whole, the best man whom the constituency can select will be the lastmentioned, Mr Williams. He has lived all his life in the district, and intends, as he says, to live there to the end of the chapter. All his interests and all his associations are bound up with it. He is not an untried man, moreover, but has already represented it, in a manner creditable to himself and acceptable to those who elected him, in the Auckland Provincial Council.