The Waitemate Election.

Manawatu Herald, 12 April 1894, Page 3

The Waitemate Election.

Mr Massey, the Opposition candidate, has defeated Mr Jackson-Palmer, the Government oandidate, by over 283 votes. Th<j result is pleasing, not from the choice of men, but from the election, showing that the feeling has at last taken a turn against the Government, though they stood at nothing which they trusted would secure the seat for their candidate. The Premier went up and spoke, spoke much to the purpose if the electors chose to sell themselves, and to make the matter still clearer, the Auckland Government paper wrote :— " There is no escape from that if Mr Palmer, the recognised Government candidate, is rejected and Mr Massny elected the Ministry will not and cannot accept the decision of the electors otherwise than as an avowal of inveterate hostility to them. Mr Massey will take his stand among the 14 or 15 Opposition representatives who were returned at the last general election, and Waitemata can take such satisfaction to itself as may be derived from the reflection that, unlike the neighbouring constituencies of Marsden and the Bay of Islands, it has rewarded the Government solicitude for the welfare of the North, with its unmade roads and depressed gumfields, by administering to Ministers a smack in the face. Whether the Government will find in this treatment a stimulus and encouragement to further exertions on behalf of ' the roadless North ' we do not pretend to say, but Ministers will be more than human if, under such oil'? curostanoes, the crying wants of Waitemata during the ensuing three years of power which is ensured to them by that overwhelming majority appear to have any special claim upon their attention." The electors, to their credit, refused the bribes and went straight for independence, thus delivering Ministers "a smack in the face " which was needed to bring them to understand that their present way of running the political machine is most distasteful to all decent feeling persons.