The Evening Star MONDAY, MAY 16, 1870.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2191, 16 May 1870, Page 2

The Evening Star MONDAY, MAY 16, 1870.

Weue tlie Provincial Council alone concerned, it would bo utterly useless for the Press to discuss uny point ot social or political economy. The knowledge of civil and political science displayed by the majority in discussions where broad principles are considered, lias proved ciude in the extreme, ihey have not the remotest notion of political justice. Take the lowest standard of right and wrong that has guided nations in times gone by, and it may be safely predicted they will adopt it, in preference to those more enlightened views which guide statesmen of the highest standing in the present day. 11° therefore matters little whether we anticipate the subjects that come before them, or review them : nothing, however reasonable, is accepted by the ruling party. They are, as their class has ever proved, narrow in their views, exacting, timid and tyrannical in spirit. Whenever a subject of wide policy comes before them, the result is not problematical. If it has a tendency to the interest of their class, no matter at what cost to others, it is sure to be adopted. If it has a tendency to retain power in their hands, although it excludes others from their rights as men, they will vote for it. All the useless refuse argument that has been thrown away by the ablest statesmen of the present day, is raked up from its ashes and reproduced as wisdom, without even the advantage of a new dress. We are told that at some ascertainable depth of ocean, each substance that sinks from its surface finds a restingplace, below which it cannot-go, and so it is in the gradations of intelligence. Our clodocratic Council is the lewd to which the cast-off theories of enlightened legislators have sunk. There may be a lower intellectual depth before they reach the bottom, but we are inclined to doubt it. Their votes on two subjects prove these truths most unmistakably. In both instances they have libelled the intelligence of Otago. In one they recommended the imposition of the most selfish and abominable of taxes, a duty on food : in the second they refused to concur in the idea of the political equality of all men of sound mind and mature age. The only virtue exhibited in .these two votes is that of consistency ; and unfortunately the exercise of it has led them to affirm as sound, principles of action that, if adopted by the Assembly,.will inflict gross injustice upon ot their fellow-men. When the question of the suffrage came up, one of the. Council affected tlie greatest fcorror at the thought that if manhood suffrage were adopted, naturalised Chinese or even Maoris would have a right to vote. It must be borne in mind that the only justifiable ground of exclusion from the right of voting, ignorance, was proposed to be guarded against by an educational testg and if Maoris and Chinese were capable of fulfilling the conditions, why should they be excluded 1 So far as the. Chinese are concerned, their civilisation dates bade far anterior to that of Britain. They had advanced in arts and science, before England’s inhabitants had even made a start in them, and to tins day their patriarchal system confers upon the mass of the people educational blessings that are only in their infancy at Home. The fact of naturalisation of a Chinese miner, would confer upon him all the rights and privileges of a born subject of her Majesty, and therefore, if the mining franchise remain unaltered, he would be entitled to vote on his miners’ right; and if ho became a householder, the payment of a rental of five pounds a year, outside a town, would qualify him to vote; while a Maori, without such naturalisation, being one of Her Majesty’s subjects, under either condition, is now entitled to vote. The resolution of the Council, therefore, if at all influenced by the considerations pub forward with the pompous idea of excluding dangerous classes, has really resulted in recommending the exclusion of a class of more than ordinary intelligence—the large mass of men of education and high social standing who are lodgers. It was something amusing although annoying, to hear the Council express their fear lest democracy in Otago should take the shape and color of Victorian political action. Any stranger listening to the pious fear of the pre- \ alence of democratic ideas would imagine that the intelligence and political morality of the Otago Provincial Council were vastly beyond those of the Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council of Victoria. But how surprised he would be to find that the clodocracy of Otago, and tlie democracy of Victoria, were actuated by similar short-sighted-ness in snatching at the shadow and losing the substance of political wisdom. He . -would expect that the sophisms of protection would have no place in the political code of Otago, and I

would bo amazed tluit so sensitive an assembly should have passed a resolution recommending its adoption. He would examine the land laws of the countrv, and he would find that the gropings of democracy had instinctively led them to place laud within reach of all who wanted it to cultivate ; and in tins respect he would at once pronounce them wiser in their generation than the clodocracy of Otago ; who have resolved to shut up their lands to the infinite danger of a dead-lock in the Province. He would examine the qualifications ot voters, and would laugh when he found that provision was made for enfranchising the agricultural laborer who rented a house outside a town at five pounds a year, while it excluded the merchant s or banker’s clerk, who paid ten or twenty times the rent annually for his lodgings. If he could get into conversation with our representatives and ask them if they believed there should be such a thing as moral principle in legislation, some of them would stare with astonishment at the question. Perhaps it might ultimately dawn upon their minds that their duty was to provide laws and regulations that would compel men to do to others as they would have others do to them ; but them as that rule would convict them of wishing to make other men pay dearly for bread to give the profit to the farmers, and of wishing to exclude their fellow citizens from voting, although their interests required equal protection with their own, it would be very inconvenient to bring tbeir conduct to such a standard. To get rid of the condemning truth, some Belial would be consulted whose counsel would acceptably “make the worse appear the better cause.” Him they would credit as the prophet they would follow. It will, in all probability, be seen at the next election that the people are much iu advance of their rulers, and that their mission of mischief Is done.