Old Grumble on Politics

Feilding Star, Volume VI, Issue 17, 19 July 1884, Page 2

Old Grumble on Politics

What peculiar properties do the waters of the Rangitikei possess, or what strange miasma is it that it exhales which affects the dwellers upon its banks so much — causing such mental abberation to many of them that they become possessed of the idea that they have all the essentials requisite for the making of statesmen ? for no less than five such ones have emerged from its shores, and are now figuring in the surrounding electorates a 9 being " most fitting persons" to represent them in Parliament. Three have crowded to their own constituency, one has gone to Foxton, and one has wandered here, where, like a sailor in a rudderless boat, he drifts to wherever the sport or fancy of the electors likes to carry him. I say drifts, for as I have followed up his speeches I notice that he has veered so much from his original views that his address at Palmerston bears no resemblance whatever to the one he delivered at Awahuri, where he was becoming so helplessly shipwrecked on that terror of land speculators — the small holdings question — when the Chairman charitably rescued him." With the experieuces of the past, the electors of Manawatu know how much faith is to be placed in the f>romises of an absent member, and how ightly the responsibility ot attending to ■■"heir interests sits upon his conscience after he has secured his seat. They have been befooled, and knowing this, have wisely resolved that their future member should be chosen from among themselves —one whose interests were so interwoven with theirs that he could not neglect them without imperiling his own. Then why bring forward in opposition one whose only recommendation is his private worth ? Is private worth all that is necessary to secure to us our rights ? If so there is abundance of private worth in Manawatu without seeking for it in another county. But it is not all that is requisite. We have claims to urge, rights to ad ranee, which will be obstinately disputed by adjoining electorates, and we need a Nestor and Achilles combined to struggle for those claims and rights, inch by inch, if we would win them. Then, electors, do not let clannish fealty warp your understanding, or private pique strangle your judgment. The prosperity of Manawatu is more momentous in its import thau personal attachment or private difference. Mr Macarthur's private worth is equal to Mr Fraser's— his public worth immeasurably greater. It has been said there are too many clever onesamongst us already. Carlyle's opinion is very different. Carlyle may be wrong ■- the others never right — -and if we endeavor to oppose intrigue by incapacity we prove Carlyle's estimate of us to be correct. Then again, electors, I appeal to your understanding to send a man in who can ably represent us ; do not destroy our stauding in the country's management by sending in a distant member whom it will be unreasonable to expect would press our claims when those claims must act adversely to his private weal. If Mr Macarthur may aot, at some time or other during his long public career, have pleased some of you so much as you would wish, remember what difficulties he has had to contend with, and that he is but mortal ; and have more generosity than our forefathers of three hundred years ago, when " men's faults were graven upon brass, their virtues written upon water." Electors, forget all private differences and put him in for the credit of Manawatu. ! Orx> Gbumbib.