Page 3 Advertisements Column 2

Dunstan Times, Issue 250, 8 February 1867, Page 3

REQUISITION. To JAM ES MACA> I) ftl-.W, Ebq., M.H.R OH', —We, the undersigned Electors of the Piovince of Otago, have the honor to request that you will allow yom-self to be nominated for the office of Superfcendent of Otago. From the truly beneficial measures in" troduced by you in the early days of the Province, despite the many disadvantages under which you then laboured in your endeavors to develope its latent resourses, we believe that your administrative talent applied to the more advanced position of Otago at the present time would devise measures which would tend greatly to the advancement of the Province in material prosperity, and in asserting its proper position as the leading commercial centre of the Colony. We feel that your legislative abi itics are so well known, and so widely and generally appreciated by the great body of the people, chat we. are quite convinced, in the event ■)f your placing your ftvvices at our dissicsal, you will be returned by an ■overwhelming majority of the Electors of Otago. We are, Sir. Yours, ifcc. Signed by above 15 J Electors.

'lO TUB ELECTORS OF Tilt: PROVINCE OF OTAGO. GENTLEMEN* —Having received numerously signed requisitions to become a candidate for the office of Superintendent of the Province, I have, although re luetantly and at the latest moment, felt it my duty to comply. Gentlemen, although I cannot say that I. myself entertain the same feelings with regard to my ability to conduct the affairs of the Province which many of my friends appear to do ; yet it would be affectation upon my part to deny that its progress was much more satisfactory during.the period in which I had an active share in the administration of affairs, than it has been of late years ; that is to say, the material re sources of the Province were much more rapidly developed, and to a greater estent in proportion to its means, than they have subsequently been ; and however much or little this distinction may have been attributed to any influence of mine, I believe that few who arc in a position to know the facts of the ease will dispute the truth of this assertion. Gentlemen, it is useless mincing the matter I feel that a great politic .1 wrong was done to me in 1360, and that the Provice has been greatly the loser. I have no hesi ation in saying that, had the principles of the policy which guided me remained in the ascendant during the hey-day of the gold discoveries, our settled population would have been largely in excess of that which it new is. We should, in ali likelihood, have had the Panama terminus to ourselves. We should certainly have had a dry dock, and possibly a railway, and the importance of every interest inthe Province would have been proportionatelycnhanced. Gentlemen—Such I believe are the iin. pressions of many of those who have urged mo to come forward upon the present "Whether, in the event of its being my lot again to resume the reins of Government, it would be possib'e to make up any leeway, I cannot tell—much would depend upon yourselves. I can only say for my part, that adversity has deprived me of none of the aspirations which, prompted me, now nearly 20 years ago, to take an active part in the formation of the settlement of Otago, and to devote the best of my life to the promotion of its interests. 1 am well aware that in responding to the wishes of my friends, I shall be placing myself in no enviable position—the mud creeks will be stirred up to their lowest depths, il isforlunes which were primarily caused in the interests'of the Province, will be (as they have been) freely stigmatised as crimes, by those who call themselves patriots and the apostles of propriety, and whose malignity so successfully persecuted I have frequently thought that it might have been more conducive to propriety, and better at least for the good name of the Province, had such men loved their adopted country more, and hated me less. Gentlemen, it is a consolation to mo to know that, notwithstanding the misrepresentations which political rancor has so assiduously propagated, there is not a public man in iNew Zealand, who, perhonally or relatively, has derived less pecuniary benefit from the public than my-