The Kumara Times. Published Every Evening. TUESDAY, AUGUST 9, 1881.

Kumara Times, Issue 1518, 9 August 1881, Page 2

The Kumara Times. Published Every Evening. TUESDAY, AUGUST 9, 1881.

While we have consistently accorded a meed of praise to the present Ministry when in our opinion their action has been such as warranted honest commendation, st.ill it ntnst not be for a moment supposed that when they go radically wrong we shall support them in any crooked path they may enter upon. That they have entered upon a most singularly crooked track in framing the Redistribution of Seats Bill cannot be disputed for a moment by any unprejudiced person. " He who hath much, to him much shall he given" is a time honored saying, and it has evidently influenced the Government to no small extent in arriving at a con. elusion as to the future representation of the colony. Those provincial districts which have always had it in their powar to swamp other districts by their votes are to have larger power given to them, and to have such an increase in the number of repieseutatives as will enable them to set the rest of New Zealand at defiance ; while at the same time the less favored districts, which

have up to the present time scarcely been allowed to raise even a faint protest against the unjustice with which they have been treated, will be put entirely in the background, and, in f'ict, utterly ignored so far as having a voi e in the government of the colon\ is concerned. Here is the pro* gramme: Otago which has hitherto h d twenty-one members, will get three more ; Canterbury, being over represented in the Ministry, will have an iucrease of seven; Nelson will lose th lie, and Westlaud one member. The most able political economists who have ever written upon the question of the representation of the people have invariably insisted upon it that the population of a district must not be taken as the only consideration in dealing with such an important matter. The New Zealand Ministry, however, evidently look upon the question from another point of view, and, in fact, lays down the principle that their own districts are only to be considered, while the outsiders, who are not in any way represented on the Government benches, are to be put in even a worse position than they have hitherto occupied. "Woe to the conquered" ia au old motto, and is evidently not lost sight of on the preseut occasion. Westland, so far as its representatives in the present Parliament is concerned, has been in perpetual opposition to the Government of the day; but surely that is no sufficient reason for disfranchisement. The general electiou took place when party feeling ran high, when men and not measures was the order of the day, when men threw their hats in the air for an individual, and not a principle, and when those who, sacrificing their own convictions, threw in their lot with what appeared to them to be the strongest battalion, gained a temporary victory. No time should be lost in ol>taining an expression of public opinion as to the course" proposed to be pursued by the Government in taking from Westland one of its members.