The Evening Star TUESDAY, JUNE 4, 1872.

Evening Star, Issue 2899, 4 June 1872, Page 2

The Evening Star TUESDAY, JUNE 4, 1872.

The electors of the W aikouaiti district are placed in a dilemma through having too many candidates. They want one man to represent them, and six start up, each saying, “ Send me.” The difficulty in all such eases is to decide which to select. Choice is generally narrowed much when there are two decided parties in a country advocating different courses of action—when, for instance, there arc Whigs and Tories, one seeking to modify existing institutions, and the other to retain them with all their accumulated abuses of a thousand years. But at Waikouaiti no such issue is placed before the constituency. The only approach to it is in the case of Sir David Monro, who seeks to re-introduce the men under whose mismanagement the Colony became involved in war and fettered by debt. All the rest speak tire same thing; they want to sec the present Government measures succeed—but, very remarkably, the help of each in his own estimation is necessary to their success. How are the electors to judge 1 In the case of Sir David Monro they refer to his political history ; but it is just this very history that leads us to warn them against him. It is his identification with a course of action to which we have ever been opposed, and which brought New Zealand to the very verge of ruin. It is his identification with a party who have ever been a drag upon the Middle Island, and who have ever held it right to appropriate its revenue to North Island purposes ; and although now, under pressure of seeking a seat in Otago, he holds the language of Otago, it must be remembered it is a new tongue to him which he has learnt to speak late in life, and which therefore there is every reason to believe he will always speak imperfectly and, like the language of his address, vaguely. With respect to Sir David there can be no doubt, and as he stands alone, his chance to be returned is the better, inasmuch as his followers, if few in number, are united. He is therefore the marked man by all the rest, almost sure of election unless the electors can make up their minds to select one out of the remaining five before the polling day. Assuming the show of hands yesterday to indicate the proportion of support each is likely to receive at the poll, were this wise course adopted Sir David would really stand no chance. His supporters numbered 17, while his opponents amounted to 20 ; but this total was so split up that the highest suffrage to another was but six. Unfortunately not one of those who

are declared candidates will of himself retire from the contest unless such udmistakeable signs of non-success are so publicly manifest as to render his probable position on the poll absurd. Four out of the five, however, must be placed in that position if Sir David is to be defeated. The situation of the electors, therefore, is perplexing. How are they to choose from the remaining five I On the whole they have, however, sound means of judging. They did not hoar Sir David Monro speak. If they had, many of his supporters would have become opponents, for he would have shown that his opposition to the present Government was on personal not on Colonial grounds. Precisely the same tendency was evident in Mr Gotten and Mr Hutcheson, They cannot see their way to stop works already commenced, but they believe they 01 iginated in a wrong mind. Now that they are begun they must go on, but then there must be prudent checks —as if the Government that originated them were not equally aware of that with themselves. Then again, statements, gathered from anonymous sources, were made of extravagant expenditure, which we venture to predict the Treasurer’s budget will fully refute; and a joke was perpetrated, that the work had been authorised some two years ago, hut had not been begun—which is simply not true. A more specious theory was put forward by Mr Cutten, with regard to railways being constructed by foreign contractors. He wished to create a feeling in his own favor by saying they ought to have been done by colonial contractors, who would thereby have become rich, and consequently others would have been enriched also. Now this is one of those false theories that prove the ignorance of him who propounds them, or Ins desire to play upon the ignorance of others. In either case quite sufficient ground for non-election. The experience of Otago during the last three years has proved that delay, increased expense, and loss of wages to working men, has been the result of letting work to local Contractors. On the Port Chalmers and Clutha lines, workmen have been robbed of their hard earned wages, and on the other hand some Colonies, Victoria) for example, has paid an enormous price for its railways, by its Government having been forced into that course of action. It has been estimated that the railways of Victoria cost something like a million of money more than they could have been made by one English firm. We commend the following passage from Tho Engineer, a London publication, to the attention of the electors of the Waikouaiti district, as an antidote against such clap trap:—

In Victoria the cost of the broad gauge has been 1.4(5,000 per mile, and 5 per cent on this amounts to L 2,300 per mile ; or, on the 220 miles proposed, to not less than L 50() 000. We are at a loss to discover a single weak point in this argument. However, let us see how Mr Higinbotham deals with the question, In his evidence he does not assort that the enormous cost o£ the existing Victorian Railways was unnecessary or avoidable, but he does tacitly admit that much lighter lines would answer the requirements of the colony, and he gravely proposes to construct the future lines on a light system, hut of sft. 3 in. gauge, at an outlay of but L 4,855 to L 6,710 per mile, or at a cost of, say, from one-ninth to one-seveuth of the existing lines! If this be possible, wc have a right to ask under what conditions were the old linos constructed ?