THE GLOBE. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1881. SIDE ISSUES.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2393, 3 December 1881, Page 3

THE GLOBE. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1881. SIDE ISSUES.

We totally object to combinations of individuals requesting electors to vote during the forthcoming elections on purely side issues. We have the Licensed "Victuallers on the one hand selecting candidates who have met with their approval, and who are to be voted for because they are supposed to uphold the interests of the Licensed Victuallers. And, again, we find tho Temperance Societies acting much in the same way. On Wednesday last the temperance political committee, composed of delegates from the various temperance societies in and around Christcburch, met at the Metropolitan Temperance Hotel, and considered the replies from various candidates that had been sent in answer to questions put by the committee. " After mature deliberation," we are told, " it was resolved to notify by advertisement, and report that the temperance electors be recommended to support the following gentlemen during the approaching general elections" (here follow the names of candidates chosen). If one were to take the action of the Licensed Victuallers and Temperance Societies alone into consideration one would imagine that the general elections merely hinged on the question of " drink or no drink." But as the temperance question is only one out of a number of questions before the electors, we hold that it is highly improper that any body should try to narrow the issues in this arbitrary fashion. What the bodies above mentioned are trying to do is to force men to abandon all considerations respecting other subjects, and to limit their attention to one alone. It matters not what sort of men candidates may be, or what their views may be on every conceivable subject, as long as they are sound on the " Drink or no Drink" question. And yet the gentlemen composing these committees would be highly insulted if they were told that they were acting the part of unpatriotic and most •narrow-minded individuals. A Good Templar may declare that the question of national sobriety is an important question, but at the most he can only say that it is 0318 out of a number of questions affecting the public welfare. The incidence of taxation, education, the proper distribution of our lands, the care of our finances, and numberless other subjects, are intimately connected not only with the political but the moral condition of the people, and it is onLy affectation to assert that every question pivots on the temperance question. It is possible to imagine a community where the temperance question would be the only one to be thought of. The members of such a community would probably be found living in a state slightly more primitive than that of the Pitcairn Islanders when first discovered. But it is ridiculous to assert that the interests of the Licensed Victuallers or their opponents count for more than one out of a series of interests which every man must ponder over if he wishes to give an intelligent vote. It is altogether past endurance that these bodios should expect persons to exercise their franchise in the narrow spirit to which they appear wedded. The Temperance Societies may declare that they are acting in selfdefence, and that they are forced into such a line of conduct by the previous action of the Licensed Victuallers. But two wrongs will never make a light, and their present platform will merely disgust large-mindei men. But the societies above alluded to are by no means the only offenders in the direction indicated. Several of the Soman Catholic dignitaries in New Zealand have attempted to coerce the votes of those over whom they h;ive influence. Mr. Brown, at the nomination at St. Albans, said that ho held in his hand a mandate from Bishop Redwood ordering Catholics to vote for no man who favoured secular education. And Mr. Brown declared, wisely enough, that he was quite content to lose the votes of Catholics who chose to sacrifice their consciences on every other question. Bishop Moran, too, some time past, told his flock to act in an exactly similar manner. Now, is it any more bearable that Bishop Rodwood should act in the manner he has, than that Licensed Victuallers and Good Templars should act as they have done P Of course Bishop Redwood's zoal for his religion is to be respected, but wo may ask him if the education question is the sole question before the electors, and, if it is not, by what right he trios to make it the sole question to be considered P Are the supposed interests of the

(Catholic Church to he held paramount and the national interests ' of New Zealand to go for nothing ? Is such conduct patriotic or entitled to respect ? Six hundred and sixtysix years ago a very great Roman Catholic prelale earned the lasting gratitude of the English nation by acting in a very contrary spirit. Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, steadily refused to subordinate the national interests to the interests of his church, and mainly by his exertions the Great Charter became law. It is true that the general issues at that time were of paramount importance, and that here in New Zealand there is no question of the safety of our national liberties. All we say is that the spirit in which the hero of the Great Charter acted was a wide and a truly Catholic one, and that the spirit of Bishop Redwood's mandate is something very different. However, there is some consolation to be gained by the prevalence of these general instructions issuing from so many quarters. The more there are of them the more difficult will they be to obey. If an elector receives two or three sets of instructions as to the manner in which he is to vote, it is more than probable that they will completely neutralize each other. This is supposing that he would otherwise have been weak enough to have been in danger of being turned from what he considered his duty by outside interference. For our own part we quite agree with Mr. Brown that the votes of those who choose to sacrifice their consciences on all other questions, for the purpose of subserving one set of views only, are not worth the picking up- .