The Globe. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1877.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 1063, 23 November 1877, Page 2

The Globe. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1877.

It is generally understood that Mr. Gapes bases liis claim to be elected Mayor for Hie second time because lie has been unjustly treated by the Council during the past year, and therefore it is necessary that lie should bo permitted to show the citizens what lie can do when he lias a. fair field, and no favor. As far as we can learn, ho does not lay claim to any past services to tho city as a ground for again coming forward. At any rate his supporters are never tired of dwelling

upon the treatment he received .-it- the hands of the Into Council to prove the necessity which exists for giving the

"little man" another trial. If he has other reasons for again wooing the suffrages of the electors they arc prudently kept in the back ground. Mr. Gapes and his friends apparently fail to see that their chief ground for claiming his re-election, if rigidly understood, is the strongest possible reason why he should not be returned. It is an admission that lie was incapable of asserting Ins ['position in a, Council composed of clear-headed business men, whose , only possible object in entering that body could be the good the city. The members of the present Council are credited with similar qualities. They, too, have been returned <>n account of their business habits and well-known public spirit. What reason have the ratepayers for believing that Mr. Gapes "will succeed in presiding over the present Council with more dignity and success than he did over the past one, or that his career during the next year will be marked by fewer blunders than the one has been which is now terminating? Yet ho now comes forward and asks-, for an opportunity of displaying qualifications ho has hitherto not given the smallest indication of possessing. Tliis demand for another trial because his past Mayoral career has been a failure is an insult to the common sense of the ratepayers. Mr. Gapes and his friends blame circumstances for all his shortcomings in the past. Would not his own incapacity be a more likely explanation ? Now what we want the ratepayers to understand is this, that Mr. Gapes's candidature is of a purely personal nature. His object in coming forward is to retrieve his reputation as a public man. It is not so much the interests of the city which he seeks as his own. He lias made a lamentable failure during the year which has closed, and he now asks the citizens of Christchureh to make a further experiment. He thinks he has got some capacity hidden away somewhere, which by dint of patience and another three hundred pounds might be brought to light. But after all we hardly think the ratepayers arc justified in taking all this trouble. It may be a matter of vast importance to future generations of Gapeses that the records of the city of Christchureh for 1878 should tell of what James Gapes had done for Iter. But we think the ratepayers of the present day would be better satisfied if he would retire into private life, and there pursue the noiseless tenor of Ins way, leaving the cares of the Mayoral office to one better qualified to undertake them.