MR VOGEL'S FIRST LEAP IN POLITICAL LIFE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 79, 31 October 1874, Page 10

MR VOGEL'S FIRST LEAP IN POLITICAL LIFE.

The following amusing sketch of Mr Vogel's introduction to publiclife in New Zealand, is taken from a pamphlet just published in Auckland by Mr W. L. Kees, entitled "The Coming ' Crisis :" — "Mr Yogel's introduction to the General Assembly was at lease romantic. A writ had been issued for the return of a member to the House of Bepresent-atives for one of the electoral districts of Otago. Mr Gillies, the lather of the late Superintendent of Auckland, being Returning Officer, repaired to the appointed place of nomination to perform his duties. Mr Vogel, as editor of the ' Otago Daily Times,' in lieu of an> ordinary reporter, also attended. The time was one in which men were making money rapidly. The Otago Gold Fields were very prosperous. Politics were at a discount : they did not pay. Eapeeiallywas this the case in reference to the politics of the General Government, for at that time the provinces were everything. When the scene of operations was reached, Mr Gillies began to read the writ to* the solitary auditor, Julius Vogel. There was no caudidate, no proposer, no- public. Suddenly Mr Vogel thought, ' I will be elected ! " He went instantly to the adjacent Provincial offices, asked two gentlemen (one of them since dead) to come out and nominate and second him, and with them came back to where Mr Gillies yet stood patiently waiting for the return of the future dictator of New Zealand. One man, nttracted by the somewhat remarkable circumstance of air elderly gentleman reading a public announcement to nobody, stood tolisten ; while Mr Albert Devore, now a solicitor practising in Auckland, on his way to one of the Courts, also attracted by the peculiarappearance, joined him. Then returned Mr Yogel and the two gentlemen. He was duly proposed, seconded, and declared duly elected, and the six people separated. The two gentlemen whose serviceslaunched Mr Vogel upon his political career returned to their official toil; little dreaming of the part they had taken in the history of New Zealand. The strange man who stopped, with open mouth, to listento Mr Gillies reading to nobody, and who himself supplied an auditory, came there for a moment unknown, and then passed away into the unknown from whence he came. Mr Devore is a rising solicitor,, and Mr Vogel is Premier of New Zealand."