COUNTRY EDITION. The Daily Telegraph MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3172, 29 August 1881, Page 2

COUNTRY EDITION. The Daily Telegraph MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 1881.

"The opposition that is being offered to the Repieaeatation Bill has been characterised as an attempt on tbe part of a minority to coerce the majority. But it 'r.ay be tailly asked ivtit-ther those who are strenuously oppciny the bill do not repres.fi t.-f, a %cry considerable majority of the oitcrors, :vho are opposed first to the ;» r ineiple uyna which the measure is b-.*ed, and secondly to the separation of the colony which will be the result if tbe hill becomes law. Tbe nominal principle of the bill is that population should be the basis o{ representation; but this principle bas not been carried out in its provisions, and it increases the numbers of representatives at tbe cost of separating districts that have a community of interests. The Wellington Post, that has a right to speak feelingly upon tbia question, points out the inconsistencies of the measure, which purports to allot Parliamentary representation on the basis of population. We have always admitted that population ought to be one main primary basis of representation, but never that it should be tbe sole basis. If that rule were adopted in its entirety there would be no excuse for refusing to include tbe whole Maori population, who assuredly contribute to the revenue of the colony through the Customs and in other ways. But the bill does not go this length, and so cannot be said to carry out its own theory. This is not its only inconsistency. It infringes its main principles at every turn. If population ia to be the sole basis, why are towns allotted 25 per cent less representation than country districts? It is usually answered that their circumstances are different—that in towns people have better opportunities of becoming educated in politics. But this simply means that representation should be in inverse proportion to political education, scarcely a teDable contention. Waiving that point, however, '.he admission that "circumstances alter ewes" even in this matter of the population basis, it must be obvious thrtt it strikes at the root of the whole argument, because if the principle is to be departed from in one instance, why not in another ? And the bill recognises this by diverging in all directions from the line of rigid uniformity. Some town districts have nearly double the population of other town districts. Some country districts have little mors than half the population of other country districts. Some town districts have a smaller population than some country districts, notwithstanding the rule that the former shall have one-fourth greater population than the latter. Take the case of Wellington City. It ia entitled on the population basis to four members, yet it is grudgingly accorded three. This is but one instance of the utter inconsistency of the measure, and of the readiness with which the population principle is thrown overboard when convenient. In the case of Wellington and Auckland it is discarded altogether. In the case of Canterbury and Otago it is imperatively insisted on to the extent of grasping at half the representation of the whole colony for those two provinces; but in their subdivision into electorates, the principle once more goes oveiboard. There are other things beside population to be taken into account in allotting representation, and that basis alone cannot justly be adopted in a colony where settlement is so peculiarly and unequally distributed ac in New Zealand. We contend that it is preposterous to push it to soch extremes as either to include the whole native population, or to confer on Canterbury and Otago absolute supremacy and control over the destinies of tha entire colony, or to disfranchise thriving and fairly populous district*? which may possess somewhat less tban their quota of population, or to 3ouple together in loathed union districts which have no two interests in common. Our Wellington contemporary condemns tbe bill in toto, alike for its splitting up of homogeneous districts, for its flagrant inconsistency and unfairness, for its pandering to the strong at the expense of the weak, for its reckless straining of a principle which in itself expresses but a half-truth, so as to sacrilSce all the rest of the colony to Canterbury and Otago, thus imperilling the maintenance of its unity.