The Cromwell Argus. AND NORTHERN GOLD-FIELDS GAZETTE. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1872.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 163, 24 December 1872, Page 5

The Cromwell Argus. AND NORTHERN GOLD-FIELDS GAZETTE. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1872.

The honourable member for this district has been requested to resign the position of trust which he holds in the name of the district, and which he has condescended to use on a few occasions, but always so as to show his want of fitness for the office, and nearly always against the interests of the people who returned him. He has blinded his eyes and deafened his ears to what all men can see and hear but himself. Hitherto neither a sense of pride, nor shame, nor honour, nor a common sense of selfrespect, has inclined him to heed the indig nant voice of a betrayed and a disappointed people. With feline tenacity he sticks on to the tenement of office, leaves the voting tenants to fight out the battle of resignations, and looks on with cool indifference as to the result. Some men when placed suddenly in positions of trust become sober, thoughtful;—as soon as the new duties and difficulties are accepted, they rise to meet them ; when alone with the responsibilities of official life before them, they come up to the level of all the demands made upon them, and more than justify the expectations of their friends, and disappoint the predictions of their enemies. Hew Zealand can proudly point to many instances of this sort in various civil and political circles. There are others again who, when honour and office are within their reach, accept them and the | obligations they impose; but who, when [ it fairly comes out that they are unequal I to the new position,—that their official relaj tion to the public only provokes the mirth, | the derision, the pity, and the contempt of | those with whom they act, and every mes- | sage from those they seek to serve only I conveys shame and indignation at a beI trayed confidence, —have at least the manliness to retire into the private life whence | they came. But Mr Hickey belongs to ; neither class. Indeed, it would be impos- | sible to classify him. He has neither the capacity to serve the public himself, nor ; the courage to give place to one that has. | He affects to be unconscious of his own defi- ; ciency when both gods and men proclaim j it ; and Ids constituents arc left to the ! poor gratification of knowing that the inca--1 pacity which unfits him for useful service also unfits him for doing much mischief. Mr Hickey, to do him justice, give one] good vote in the Council : ho lifted his! voice against the honorarium. Bet hoi must have done this unwittingly and by | surprise, for he afterwards repented of! it, and took the first opportunity of show- j iiig the sincerity of his regret. He scorned the extravagant sum uf twenty shillings a j day, and voted the services of the Council | honorary. In another part of the same | session, he modestly accepted the insignifij cant sum of nineteen shillings and eleven pence three farthings instead. Had the honourable member boldly adhered to his vote against a lavish expenditure, it may bo doubted whether he would so soon have been pressed to resign ; but it is certain that had the payment clause been put down, he would have seen his way clear to a resignation without difficulty and with- ] out delay. We do not set it down to the gentleman as a fault that he has not given i a brilliant representation of the district in j the Council at Dunedin. That high service j for which long-established habits and natuI ral inaptitude have unfitted him, it would be idle to expect.—Tie fired into the tree | at a venture, and looked for something to fall ; it might be a dead monkey, or, if fortune favoured him as it does the brave, j it might be compensation to the squatter ■ and a rich commonage for Cromwell. But no one was deceived by the hollow pretence: it widened the breach it was intended to heal, and met only the scorn due ; to all shams. But while we blame Mr Hickey for holding an office for which he has not a i single qualification, let us be just. There ' is a blameworthiness altogether apart from Mr Hickey', which lies deeper, and is of ; far greater consequence to the people of j this country. We are afflicted with a surfeit of Governments The whole Colony is bestridden with them. And there must be something wrong in any Government when it is possible for such men as the Hickeys and the (Shepherds and many others to push themselves to the front, and trick up a livelihood from a scanty revenue supplied by a tax-ridden population. Old Dan Moore might now have enjoyed the honourable distinction which ! Mr Hickey has so grievously abused, if the Returning Officer would have given him proper time to wash his face, put on his political uniform, and find-up a friend sober enough to stand erect and propose

him as a fit and proper person, if our governing bodies go on to increase during the next fifteen years at the rate they have during the last, and after the same kind, we shall either he governed off the face of the earth, or to some other and better part of it; or down the brazen throat of officialism, or perhaps into the hands of our English creditors to be sold for what we may fetch in the market. No man ought to be heard in the councils of any country who has not a life of honest activity and thrift to recommend him. Is it at all likely that whose who are unsuccessful everywhere else should be successful legislators 1 Are we to be governed by broken down miners, pettifogging lawyers, and the abortions of society 1 Can we expect an | honest, economical administration while | we give up the keeping of the public pursestrings to those who have no purse of their I own to keep ] If so, then however near a political millennium may be to other countries, it is far enough from New Zealand. But the head and front of all faultiness in this matter lie with the constituents. Their utter want of discrimination, their carelessness and criminal neglect, are the causes of that of which we justly complain. Mr Hickey may be no better now than when elected, but certainly he is no worse. That we are misrepresented is not our nils fortune, but our fault. Elections, as they are managed here, are looked upon as scenes of senseless grimace, a kind of Punch and-Judy show, where he who can grin the broadest has the fairest chance of success. Our halls of legislation, instead of offering seats as prizes to wisdom, weight of character, and honest ambition, are scrambled for by a class of loafers, whoso deepest slake in the country is the underground depth of their tent-pol«s, and who have nothing to recommend them to public confidence but brazen impudence and a broken-down fortune. Such men have nothing to lose by recklessness, waste, and extravagance, and nothing to gain by a wise and economical management of the public estate. Those who are of known worth and tried integrity among us stand aloof in disgust, and husband their means so as to be ready fur an exodus so soon as our purblind rulers shall impose burdens no longer to be borne. Mr Hickey’s lease of office reaches through a period during which large sums of money will ho expended. Important public works will be initiated. Our adopted country has now entered upon a new path : whither it will lead, no seer among us is clever enough to predict. A I fresh game of politics is to he played out, i and the stakes at issue are nothing less than success or national insolvency. If | ever we need* d wisdom, watchful care, and j unswerving rectitude among our rulers, 1 we need them now, to save us trom threa'toned and irretrievable disaster. Is Mr Hickey the man for the crisis 1 Is he the fit and proper person to assist in dealing with the Provincial problems that ore daily turning up to be solved 1

A word in conclusion on the action of tin? Town Council in this matter. Why did they table a resignation-petition having for its object the removal of Mr Hickky as a useless incumbrance to the district ? Mr f Tic key does not represent the Town Council as such : it is no part of his business to do so. As ‘‘individual” citizens, they have the right to protest against being misrepresented, but as a corporate body they aie not, and were not intended to be,

represented at all. Let the Council fill up the nineteen-fathom programme of which the Mayor delivered himself last July ; let them give the nettle-rash to the West Knd Sahara; send us clean water, and plenty of it ; and attend to their own proper line of things to the end. Tf the Council travel out of its legal path, and persist in a course of wrongheadedness, In the neglect of those duties which the ratepayers have devolved upon them, we shall not bo surprised to find Mr Hickey called up from his obscurity to assist in petitioning for the removal of the Mayor and Council, for having failed to redress the ratepayers’ grievances, and falsified the flattering promises with which they entered upon their term of oitice.