COLONIAL HONORABLES.

Evening Star, Issue 3010, 11 October 1872, Page 4

COLONIAL HONORABLES.

It is by no means creditable to the honesty of candidates for election to Parliament that a country journal, the Mnri/boi'ough Advert User, writes a long paragraph in celebration of the fact, which it speaks of as “an unprecedented event in our experience of electioneering,” that it had received payment of an advertising account by return post. “This” says the Advertiser, “is a new sensation ! The amount was indeed small, but a little with promptitude is better than a great deal with extended procrastination. It is a popular delusion that election times are profitable to newspapers. Our experience of them has been extra toil, petulance froth excited candidates, ill-manners from excited partisans, and —bad debts. The Legislature in its wily wisdom has made all expenses connected with elections debts of honour. Well, there is plenty of honor—in words. Plenty of In morubles - they are all honorable men ! But many practise dishonesty. Two members we sued in the County Court pleaded the Electoral Act in bar of payment. ■>n three occasions, when proceedings were initiated, we received letters from the defendants’ solicitors, informing us that they had received instructions to plead the same Act, and advising us to put up with the loss at once, and not increase the amount by the costs of law. On two other occasions the defeated candidates quietly sailed for .New Zealand, and although one of them shortly afterwards recovered a valuable landed estate in that colony which had been subject to litigation, he had no honor left—at least none to throw away op a printer. And he had been high up on this honor list;, ip tfte front rank, a Minister of the ( rown f >r the Colony of Victoria in several Administra* tions.” Our contemporary promises to give sketches of a few “ Heads of the People in their Character of Parliamentary Pickpockets.” And these are the men who aspire to make our laws, and some of whom actually do so I—Australasian,