The Evening Star. TUESDAY, JULY 18, 1871

Auckland Star, Volume II, Issue 474, 18 July 1871, Page 2

The Evening Star.

TUESDAY, JULY 18, 1871

" For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that wo can do."

It is beyond question that the principle of vote by proxy is strictly just, in theory, but it is equally unquestionable that in practice it is unjuotin the extreme. The present annual meetings in connection with the various Highway Boards, as all previous ones, have demonstrated this to the satisfaction of the most sceptical; and next to the scrip market, we do not know anything in our institutions that more conduces to deteriorate the principles of the community than this annual opportunity afforded to people of overreaching and being overreached by one another. There is a consciousness on the part of most people that the collection of proxies is a dishonest proceeding, and we think most of those who indulge in this practice to an extreme extent are very considerably lost to shame. That there is frequently a quid fro quo given for a proxy by those who have important purposes to eft'ect is pretty well known ; and the abundant facilities that are afforded for the actual purchase of proxies are sufficient to damn the system in the estimation of decent people. That a man. is, in all equity, entitled to have his interests represented at a meeting for the imposition of taxes and the election of administrators of these taxes, where he himself is necessarily absent, is scarcely to be questioned. But this is a very different thing from the disreputable practice of collecting proxies to override the wishes of those who have no special purposes of tboir own to serve. We shall not specify any particular district in which sucli scandals have been, or are about to be perpetrated. In some of the elections that have just taken place persons have presented themselves to vote, with their hands literally full of these documents obtained by plausibla representations, and probably even more questionable means; aud, from what we have heard, we believe that some Highway meetings yet to coihe will be conducted with even :i nioro remarkable application of tl'e ayntoin of proxy. Jt is really time that this system, as at present convicted, should be painted in its irun colours, and that the man who comes so fortified by proxies, previously obtained, as to swamp the general wishes of the ratepayers, should be branded as dishonest, and regarded aa intending to eft'ect selfish and improper purposes which-would not be tolerated by ratepayers. The abuse of proxies, as at present developed in tiiis province, is of the most flagrant kind, and, in the absence of any better means of correcting it, we would advocate that the names of the holders of an excess of proxies at any or these elections should be published, and that they should be held up to be pointed at by all honest men.