REGISTRATION.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Volume II, Issue 88, 2 March 1864, Page 3

REGISTRATION.

We give the following article from the Daily Telegraph of the 22nd inst The good government of no people has ever yet been perfected until the people themselves had, by an active and healthy public opinion, testified their appreciation of liberal institutions, and their determination to secure them in their full integrity. Matured and enlightened legislators have, in all ages, looked with fear and foreboding to the future, when they found the people indifferent to the political privileges they possess, and slothful in their efforts to secure those within their reach. Solon, the celebrated legislator of Athens, history informs us, enacted a law making it a capital offence for any citizen remaining neuter when important political questions had to be debated. He appears to have believed such reckless neglect or moral cowardice so detrimental to the interests of the commonwealth that it could be expiated only by death. In a political contest, relating to particular men or measures, a well-wisher to his country may be permitted to remain silent; but when the great interests of a community are at stake it becomes every man to act with firmness and vigor. The present is a season of this nature in New Zealand, and had Solon lived in our midst at this time, we should have hailed him as a " wise despot," well qualified to legislate for a slothful, apathetic, degenerate community of British subjects. The indifference which the people of this Province exhibit to the privilege of the franchise justifies these comments.

The most signal privilege which an enlightened people can enjoy is the liberty of discussing every subject which can fall within the compass of the human mind, and exercising an influence on the selection of the men who are to legislate on these subjects. So long as these privileges are cherished and used freedom will flourish, but if they are neglected or impaired, then they will neither be well understood nor long retained. New Zealand is passing through a crisis which must determine its permanent prosperity or speedy retrogression. Hitherto it has been heaping up accumulated political grievances ; it has been suffering from the expanding evils arising from a defective constitution, worked by shortsighted, sentimental politicians, who (either from a narrow-minded and provincial policy, or a morbid sentimental idea,) have gone on from blunder to blunder, until the Colony has been split into numerous sections —which fight, not for the colony, but for the particular faction to which they belong. The time has come when this state of things must be changed. The very life of the colony is threatened; the ruling few have turned a deaf ear to the pleadings of the many. Absorbed in the desire of compassing their own small aims, they have forgotten the nature and responsibility of the trust eonfided to them. We will not upbraid them for their shortcomings Great as have been tlieir mistakes, they are less culpable than those who have not only refused to take part in the legislation of the country themselves, but have neglected to secure the political privileges which have been placed within their reach. It is to the apathy and leaden lethargy of the people themselves that the blame is attributable for the miserable political disorganisation which is now everywhere observable.

The question now to be considered is, what is to be done to rectify the blunders of the past, and insure better legislation in the future. The answer is simple —Let every man who is qualified ascertain that he has been registered as an elector. Upon this everything depends. Otago has the power, if the people are manly enough to exercise it, to revolutionize the entire system of Government. If they now embrace the opportunity for Registration which the next five weeks offers, they will be powerful for good; if they neglect this opportunity they will deservedly feel the bitterness of such neglect, and be doomed to witness with repinings, the intensification of the Government blundering and Provincial scheming which has already split the colony of New Zealand into a number of parties who, in their desire to serve their own ends, are sowing the seeds of agitation, and bitter discontent throughout the length and breadth of the Provinces. Daniel O'Connell, the great agitator of Ireland, advocated, as the most efficient means for a misgoverned people to obtain justice, to "Agitate, agitate, agitate;" but that long-headed, clear-minded, and progressive Conservative statesman, the late Sir Robert Peel, improved upon the sentence, and substituted the words "Register! Register!! Register !!! " We commend the latter advice to the people of this Province. They may agitate with a persistent and demonstrative auger, but unless they register their declamation will be as " the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal"—their remonstrances will be unheeded, and their discontent intensified. We cannot, therefore, too strongly urge the inhabitants of this Province to register. Upon their doing this everything depends. Upon

the number of electors now enrolled will b0 the amount of Representation hereafter to be enjoyed. The difficulties in the way of reform we acknowledge are great, but there never was a more favorable time for working against these difficulties than the present. The colony is convulsed, 'lhe death-knell of Provincialism has been sounded, but it depends upon the interest now taken by those qualified to take part in the election of our lawgivers, to determine the particular time when the antiquated and exploded Provincial system shall be extinguished. The period for registration is fast passing away. Those who do not register before the end of March will be disfranchised for another year. We have heard reports to the effect that the Government is throwing obstacles in the way of those who desire to register —that in many of the up-country districts numbers are anxiously seeking to obtain the forms required to be filled up, but that they are not to be obtained. We cannot believe that such is the case. But this warning we would sound—the people are not to be trifled with ; if the opportunity is denied them of following Sir Robert Peel's advice to register, they will take Daniel O'Connell's line of political activity and agitate, and those who now obstruct the former, will learn, when it is too late, that they have created a monster which, like the creature of Frankenstein, may prove their destruction.