OAVERSHAM ELECTION.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 3222, 18 June 1873, Page 3

OAVERSHAM ELECTION.

To the Editor.

Sir, —Your masterly expos 6 of the unscrupulous tactics of that rampant aspirant for political honors, Mr Stout, should do good generally, and particularly in Caversham, threatened as it is with being saddled with one of the chief obstructionists. Mr Stout may be clever, but his abilities do not appear to be of an useful kind to the community ; and it is impossible to seo what claim he has on the Caversham electors, unless brass and self-assertion, and his having insulted their understanding by the Atheistical remark at a public meeting, that religion had nothing to do with politics —tantamount to saying that the Deity has no share in the moral government of the world Let us bear what that admired sage, Dr Samuel Johnson, says of politicians of the Stout-Gillies type (page 1-’ 6, Boswell’s Life). Comparing such to Payne and Hazelrig, he says “ With

such men the wheels of government would be completely obstructed ; such men oppose merely to show their power, and from envy, jealousy, and perversity of disposition ; and not gaining themselves, would hate and oppose all who did; and not loving the prince from the mere spirit of insolence and contradiction, would oppose and thwart him on all occasions.” How true is the picture. Anyone reading the plain and conclusive statement of the Superintendent in to-day’s Si ar on the Constitution Act, and compar ing it with the flood of bunkum which Mr Stout delivered himself of at the Oaversham meetings, must be blind not to see how much the candidate cares for truth, and what the electors of Oaversham may expect if they voluntarily saddle themselves with a misrepresentative of the class so well and truly described above.—l am, &c., Saul. Dunedin, June 18.