PALMERSTON.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2496, 15 February 1871, Page 2

PALMERSTON.

(FROM AN OCCASIONAL CORRESPONDENT.) February 13tb, 1871. Having just arrived from up country, with a few minutes to spare, en route for Oamaru, your readers may be interested to know what is going on iu the remoter districts in matters political. Mr Macandrew was very well received in the Wakatip and Dunstan districts, but being closely followed by Mr Rei 1, lias been to a certain extent taken at an advantage ; the last speaker always carrying with him the floating element of opinion, which flourishes in tap rooms, and m kes public meetings a diversion. Mr Reid is very earnest and really seems to believe iu bis own very crochetty ideas; this goes d >wn with not a few, and he will certainly make a show iu these districts, although he has no chance of a majority. At Nascby the votes will be much divided, and abstracting the mining clement, there will be little one way or the other. The election of Mr Shepherd for the Assembly took everybody by surprise. The miners at the Teviot and Drybread voted for him almost to a man. It is said that he very skilfully worked Drybread upon the anti-squatter cry—Glassford’s manager having recently asserted the rights of the pastoral tenants in a very practical manner; causing huts and slaughter yards to be removed At Clyde, upon the nomination day. all the township hovels were impounded by the local speaker, and iu the face of such criminal mistak s, it may be wondered at that Fraser did as well as ho did. Tho Teviot vote was worked by the übiquitous J, C. Brown, who for some reason impossible to conceive, wished to sec Shepherd as a possible colleague—who, it is to be hoped, will be delighted accordingly. The Otago team will be a queer one iu the new Assembly, and scarcely more unanimous than it has be6u for some years past. 1 At Nascby the great excitement is of course the General Assembly election. There are six candidates, Messrs Macassey, of Dunedin ; George; of the Victoria Hotel; Hortslett, formerly clerk in the Goldfields Secretary’s office j Mervyn, late M.H.R.. for tho Manuherikia ; Pratt, editor of the Waikouaiti Herald, and Mr Bremn :t, storekeeper. It is arranged that Vr George and Mr Bremner will retire, qnd the contest will therefore lie between Macassey, Mervyn, Pratt, and Hertslett. It is impossible to form a conjecture even as to tho result. Messrs Mervyn and IJratt are carrying on an active canvass with out districts, while Mr Macassey’s friends are out iu all directions. The poll is on Thursday, so the result will hardly be known in Dunedin until Saturday. Macandrew, from all accounts, made a great success at Palmerston, and as ! we hear, through all the northern districts,- v