TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Kumara Times, Issue 1486, 2 July 1881, Page 2

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

"A Burgess."—We cannot understand how councillors or any persons who have read "The Municipal Corporations Act " can so construe the Act as to consider Mr Simmons still a councillor. What is more conclusive than the following (which, although we quoted it in our remarks on the subject on the 21st June, we now report with the sequel)?— Clause 60, " Mumicipal Corporations Act, 187 G," states that "Every burgess enrolled in respect of rateable property, the value of which, whether in one or more tenements, or in one or more wards, amounts in the whole to not less than twenty-five pounds a year, shall be qualified to be a Councillor of the Borough, or of any ward thereof." And clause til, which follows, states that " The following persons shall be incapable of being or of being elected to be Councillors, that is to say person not having the qualification above mentioned." Mr Simmons not being enrolled, he is, we read it, "incapable of being" a Councillor and that, too, from the moment the last Burgess Roll was legally signed in which his name did not appear. We bear no personal animus against Mr Simmons ; we believe all his numerous motions in the Council have been made with the best intentions. " New brooms," it is said, "sweep clean": we quote this saying respectfully. But immediately Mr Simmons allowed his name to disappear from the Roll, we regarded him in the light of an intruder at the Council table, merely from the fact that we consider he sits there as a councillor illegally.