THE WAKANUI ELECTION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume III, Issue 669, 22 June 1882, Page 2

THE WAKANUI ELECTION.

Referring to the successful and unsuccessful candidates for the Wakanui seat, the. Otago Daily Times says:— “ Whatever may be thought of Mr Saunders’ views, or of his manner of urging them, there is no concealing his altogether unusual strength of character. He cannot be said to have settled ideas in politics so much as rooted principles which nothing can shake. He is a constitutional Radical of the most pronounced and aggressive type; a man of extraordinary courage and unabatable tenacity; a student of politics who bolts his subjects whole, and digests them by the gastric force of unsparing mental exercise; an experienced and by no means feeble administrator, and one of the very ablest public speakers in the country. He has great faults, it is true. He is violent, self-conceited, and incorrigible in his prejudices, and totally incapable of co-operation or self-control, unless

under circumstances of the most pressing emergency. When such circumstances arise, we are bound to say for him, he has more than once laid aside his turbulence, and shown better qualities than even his greatest ad mirers gave him credit for. In fact, under all conditions, he is a public man of the very strongest description. Yet he has been signally defeated by Mr Ivess, an extremely negative sort of person, not because the electors like Mr Ivess, but because Mr Saunders is altogether too strong for their taste. Mr Ivess is, we believe, a very respectable man, whose mission hitherto has been to start country newspapers in villages where there did not appearto be any opening for that branch of enterprise, and, having started them, to sell them, and start some more in J some other villages. To our knowledge he has been at this business in all parts of the colony for many years past, and we should think he has probably acquired and sold more newspapers than any other three men in New Zealand. It is this propensity that has gained him his sobriquet oi “the rag-mer-chant.” We understand that Mr Ivess has always had a keen ambition to be in politics, and that his odd infatuation for the humbler sort of newspaper enterprise has been mainly the outcome of that ambition. Not possessing any of the ordinary qualifications for making a figure before the public, he has often brought himself suddenly into prominence in a quiet neighborhood*by dropping in with a printing plant, bringingout a newspaper, and astonishing the rural folk into the belief that a man of consequence had come among them. Many years ago he performed this feat on the West Coast of the North Island, and was so elated by his success that he stood for Parliament for the district of Egmont, in opposition to the Colonial Treasurer, Major Atkinson. We do not know whether he got any votes—we rather think not; but we well remember the fuss that the affair caused at the time. Ever since then Mr Ivess has been starting newspapers and trying to get into Parliament whenever he saw anything like a chance, however poor; and now at fast he has succeeded. What he means to do now he has gained the goal of his ambition we cannot guess. He has not, as we gather from his speeches and from all accounts of him, the smallest capacity for politics, and he is past the age for developing any. He will, in short, be neither better nor worse than nine out of ten ot those around him ; but will merely add one more to the list of respectable nobodies who form the great majority of the first i Parliament elected on the residential | suffrage.”