The Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, THURSDAY, 10th AUGUST, 1865.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 6, Issue 296, 10 August 1865, Page 2

The Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, THURSDAY, 10th AUGUST, 1865.

Awake of the strength of the opposition,— fearful of the result of the next election fur the General Assembly,— the Government party have resolved to take “time by the f.nelock,” and now, while the New Zealand Parliament is in session, have begun to take their measures in order to secure the return of Mr Donald M‘Lean at the next election of members for the General Assembly. We have not heard that Mr Ormond, the member for the district of Clive, has failed to satisfy them. On the contrary, if we can trust their mouth-piece, “Fiat Justitia,” in the columns of their organ, he has given them unqualified satisfaction. “So watchful and attentive to the interests of the Province” has he been, that they actually feel proud of their representative. Therefore we may conclude that it is not to occupy his place iu the Assembly, but rather to keep out Mr Coleuso that these exertions are being made at this early date to get the electors of the Town pledged to vote for Donald M'JLean. The recent complete failure of a similar attempt to keep Mr Coleuso out of the Provincial Council would, we might suppose have been warning sufficient to that party of the hopelessness of their attempt to thwart the will of the people ; but it seems that it is not so, and that it needs the further defeat of the chief officer of the province to convince them that the people will not longer suffer themselves to be misrepresented as they have hitherto been. When this is accomplished we may perhaps hope that they will be convinced of the futility of their efforts, and cease to throw obstacles in the way of the expression to the people’s will.

The electors of this town have only recently shewn in the most umuistakeable manner that they feel that the illegal land occupiers have been the curse of the colony, and especially of the province of Hawke’s Bay, They have recorded their protest against the system and their will on the matter in a petition shortly to be laid before the'Assembly. They kuow well that from the first it has been in the power of Donald M'Lean to have stopped the system, and so to have acquired the lands of the Island for settlement, and that

if he had dope his duty to his. Government and the people he would have done so; but they know that be has preferred his own inherits to thp public W&l s•** has himeelf

joined in the law-breaking clique for his own enrichment; —and has at length succeeded, in spite of popular protest, in dragging down the Provincial Government into the same position, by illegally leasing lands from the natives, solely that the illegal squat-

ters MIGHT BE ABLE IN SOME DEGREE TO justify themselves by referring to the action of the Government in the same direction as their own. And this is the man that the Government party would force upon us as our representative, to send whom would be to stultify ourselves and revoke the prayer of the petition so heartily adopted by us but a few weeks ago. Again we cannot fail to he struck with the secret underhand way in which the work of entrapping the electors into a pledge for him has been undertakenNo sooner does the maii start f.r Wellington, and the member whom it is intended to supplant is precluded from knowing for some teu days of what is going on, than the agitation begins—not, be it observed, an open and above board agitation, by advertisement or through the columns of their organ—but by a personal visitation of such electors as it is supposed may be influenced, and who may be secured by a promise, or induced to sign a requisition to him, and at the same time so privately and secretly conducted as not to be known, or even suspected, beyond the charmed circle of those who have been requested to sign. We know that the promoters of this movement do not profess to have the supplanting of Mr Coleuso as their motive ; and we know that some at least of those wbo have been induced to siga, are his friends, and have simply given their signature for Mr M‘Leau as being a preferable man to Mr Ormond, as member for the district of Clive, —not having as yet heard of tiie proposed colleague for Coleuso in the Assembly, and being under the erroneous impression that they have a vote for two members; —but we do trust that no more of his friends will be so betrayed. There is no doubt that we shall be able to send with him another of the people’s friends—-one who bus already been tried in another Council, and who has shewn himself able and willing to defend the rights of his constituency.

Electors ! do not for tiie present pledge yourselves to anyone. There is no reason for such unseemly haste. The Assembly wifi probably sit for the next three mouths to come, and we do not see any reason to fear (or hope for) a dissolution before that time. Remain free now that you may be ready when the time shall come.