The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prevalebit WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 1884. The Vogel Requisition.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1265, 28 May 1884, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prevalebit WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 1884. The Vogel Requisition.

Three or four connected with the pastoral interests of this County, apparently disgusted with Mr Wason’s political tergiversation and eccentric notions, and by no means relishing Mr Purnell’s popular sympathies, have started a requisition to Sir Julius Vogel to contest the vacant seat for Ashburton. The source of the requisition is a decidedly appropriate one, seeing that Sir Julius, during his political career in the colony, was always devoted to the interests of the great landowners and monied classes ; and in point of fact, except at election times, never recognised the existence of any other class of the community. We suspect, however, that the working men of Ashburton are not likely to be gulled into voting for a disappointed speculator. We are not going to review Sir Julius’s past history, which is tolerably familiar to old colonists. We are now paying the penally of his past extravagance, in the shape of heavy taxes, with a prospect of still heavier at an early date. Sir Julius stopped in the colony just as long as it suited him, and then abandoned it for the purpose of accepting the lucrative post of AgentGeneral. This, in turn, he used as a stepping stone to enable him to enter upon the career of a joint stock company promoter. His position as Agent-General enabled him to obtain the office of Chairman of the New Zealand Agricultural Company, and in defiance of the Civil Service Regulations he held the two offices in conjunction, until the Hall Government positively refused to submit any longer to such a barefaced breach of propriety, when Sir Julius, without the slightest hesitation, threw overboard the colony, whose interests he professes to have so much at heart, and kept the Chairmanship of the Company, as being the most payable office of the two. Rumor has it that his more recent speculations have not proved very successful. What his precise object in visiting the colony just now may be we do not profess to know. It is commonly understood that one purpose of his visit is to enforce an old claim of his against the Government for several thousands ofjpounds, as commission for floating a loan for the colony while Agent-General. This claim has already been adjudicated upon by the General Assembly, which justly considered that the business of floating loans was part of Sir Julius’s ordinary duty as Agent - General, and that as the colony had paid him the splendid salary of ,£1,500 a y ear during the time he held that post, while the office had evidently brought to him most substantial collateral benefits, he had not a shadow of a claim, either legal or moral, upon the colony for commission. Sir Julius Vogel frankly told the Gisborne electors that his stay in the colony was limited to a few months’ duration, and that he had no intention whatever of again taking up his residence in New Zealand; and the Gisborne electors wisely thought that a mere bird of passage would be a very undesirable representative for their district. We suspect the Ashburton electors will be of a similar opinion.