TREATMENT OF CANDIDATES FOR LEGISLATIVE HONORS.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2493, 11 February 1871, Page 2

TREATMENT OF CANDIDATES FOR LEGISLATIVE HONORS.

To the Editor of the Evening Star.

Sui, —Is it not wonderful the profundity of abuse which is heaped, through the Press and otherwise, on the head of any aspirant to political honors in this City. The rjucation naturally which must arise to the nfnd of every right-thinking man is, viz.: Is the honor or does the honor of a seat in our Provincial or other assemblies, compensate for the heaps of browbeating, worry, and contumely which a candidate must suffer ere he can expect to represent a constituency ? This system of persecution is becoming so momentous a drawback to able but sensitiveminded men, that rather than suffer the ordeal, they prefer to remain in the background ; while charlatans and mountebanks occupy seats to legislate for the wants of the country.

It is high time this privilege of not only attacking the public but the private character of gentlemen in every way fitted for legislative honors should cease, and at the forthcoming election for members for the City, personal attacks should be by every legitimate means discouraged, and the person or persons guilty of such base and outrageous conduct deprived of the right of speaking. The manner in which certain demagogues are tolerated at nominations in Dunedin is anything but a credit to the City, and the

sooner such nuisances are extinguished, the sooner will we have a more intellectual class of representatives soliciting our suffrages. Trusting the working-classes will see the advisability of discouraging humbug, come from what quarter it may, I am, & c., Progress. February 10.