COUNTRY EDITION. The Daily Telegraph TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3237, 15 November 1881, Page 2

COUNTRY EDITION. The Daily Telegraph TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1881.

The nomination of candidates for tbe representation of Napier will take piace in the old Provincial Council Chamber at noon on Thursday, the Ist day of December, and the polling day is fixed for the 9th of that month. Up to tbe present time there are only two announced candidates, Mr Buchanan and Mr McSweeney. Between these two gentlemen there is a very wide gap and in no sense can either of them be regarded as truly representative of the real interests of this town. Tt is impossible to walk thestreets of Napier without discovering this feeling, for the opinion is general that neither, Mr Buchanan nor Mr McSweeney is the real choice of the people. Mr Buchanan has the Further disadvantage of not being a townsman, and of having done nothing in the whole of his past career to entitle him to any claim to the suffrages of the electors of Napier. Mr McSweeney's peculiar claim to be regarded as a representative man may be better known by-and-bye than it is at present, but his declared opposition to Mr Ormond is sufficient to secure for himself tbe determined hostility of a very large number of electors. Although the borough has obtained now for the first time separate representation, it does not cease to remain an itegral portion of the provincial district of which it is the chief town and the natural outlet. Upon the prosperity of the country depends the progress of Napier, and it is just as important now as it ever was that the representatives of the three electorates comprising this district should be agreed upon main political questions, and united in their parliamentary action. Without this the district loses the strength of its representation, and in the loss of the country the town must suffer also. This provincial district has never yet presented itself in the General Assembly in the character of a house divided against itself, and we trust that it will never do so. Mr Buchanan makes a good point in his address with regard to the importance of unity. He says "recent political events must have served to point unmistakably to the necessity in this community of some base for united and concerted action being taken by its members on leading questions." The " base " to which Mr Buchanan refers is no doubt that upon which the question of local government rests, and on that question we believe he is in thorough accord with Mr Ormond. We have no wish to see politics narrowed down to the comparatively petty interests of particular localities as Sir George Grey would have it. In sending a man to Parliament the people expect him to regard himself in some sense as a representative of the whole colony, aud not altogether as the delegate of a small community. Sir George Grey, however, said at his meeting last night at Auckland, " What was it to the citizens of Auckland if 400 native prisoners lay in the Southern gaols, compared with getting their local interests represented " ? This is all very well to a certain extent, but it is quite possible for a constituency to have its local interests represented, and for its representative to care a great deal as to whether the native policy of the Government was just and wise, or cruel and foolish. In the choice of a candidate to represent them, we crust the electors will not fall into the blunder of selecting a man who is oblivious to all interests outside those of this little town.