THE Mount Ida Chronicle. FRIDAY, MAY 27, 1870.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 69, 27 May 1870, Page 2

THE Mount Ida Chronicle. FRIDAY, MAY 27, 1870.

The near approach of the meeting of the General Parliament of the Colony renders it essentially necessary that the requisition calling upon Messrs. Yogel and O'Neill to resign their seats, as members for the Otago Goldfields, should be as extensively as possible signed, and forwarded to those gentlemen without delay, in order that new writs for the seats at present tilled by them may issue before the Parliament shall meet. The copy of the requisition to which'we. have referred, so far as this place alone is concerned, received, we are informed, over 150 signatures ; and we doubt not that the other copies, which have been distributed throughout the length and breadth of the Goldfields, have been equally numerously signed. We have ourselves no hesitation in expressing our opinion that a very large majority of the minors and residents on the Goldfields will record their deliberate objection to having their affairs dealt with by absentees and by. enemies, when they can find gentlemen iii their own Province quite willing and capable of conducting them in a fair, straightforward, arid honest manner, and for the benefit of the Goldfields and the general weal and welfare of the Province. It must not be forgotten that circumstances have entirely changed since Messrs. Yogel and O'Neill were elected to the seats they at present occupy. At the time to which we refer, now some three years back, Mr. Yogel was associated with the Province in the closest possible manner, and had already given promise of those talents which have led to his obtaining his present highly distinguished position. At that period Mr. Yogel was a shareholder in, and the ostensible and admitted editor of, the first newspaper or, to speak technically, the " leading journal " in the South Island. In electing Mr. Yogel therefore, when they did, the miners may be said to have exercised a wise discretion. They elected a man of known and admitted ability, and one whose position enabled him to use that ability in their behalf in a most powerful and telling manner. We will go further, and say that as a G-oldfields member, when resident in and connected with this Province by the ties of business and interest, Mr. Yogel has, on more than one occasion, done signal service to the Goldfields in his place in Parliament. But, alas, the scene, as •well as Mr. Yogel's position, is changed, and the same talents which it was formerly his duty to exercise for the benefit of his present constituents, and of the Province of Otago, he is now called upon, by his change of position, to exercise in the cause of the Province which he has.chosen as the field of his present labors. It is not the least strange part of the

case, so far as Mr. Vogel is concerned, that, in addition to holding two of the most important offices in the Colony, he still wields his powerful pen as editor of the " leading journal" in the North Island, as he did formerly as editor of that of the South Island. It is, however, no mere change from ' Daily Times ' to ' Southern Cross.' The cahnge necessitates a change of feeling, a change of politics, and a change of interest. AVhile formerly, from position, from association, and perhaps fom conviction also, Mr. Vogel's proclivities were essentially Southern; they, from the alteration iii position, from different associations, and from personal interest also, must necessarily now have become Northern, and consequently antagonistic to those of the residents and miners in this Province. If an exemplification of this fact were necessary we need only point to Auckland having been fixed upon by Mr. Yogel. in his capacity of Postmaster-General, as the terminus of the San Francisco mail. "Would Mr. Vogel, we ask, have made such a selection of a port of arrival and departure had not his feelings and proclivities become thoroughly and essentially Northern ? No man can serve two masters. We cannot, therefore, as meu. expect Mr. Vogel to do so faithfully and honestly; and feeling such to be the case, it is only justice to ourselves to terminate a connection from whieh we cannot expect to gain any further benefit or advantage, and which will, on all future occasions, be used against s. As matters at present stand, we are supplying the rod with which to scourge our own backs.

Of Mr. O'Neill we have little to say, otter than that Bis position, his interest, and his proclivities have become like those of Mr. Yogel—essentially Northern—and that, if in his case we have not the same talent to fear, there is neither reason nor justice why our legi • timate power in the Assembly should be diminished, if not nullified and destroyed, by the continuation of the present connection with Mr O'Neill. If Messrs. Yogel and O'Neill desire to continue to hold seats in the Parliament of New Zealand, let them at least restore to us the trust which we, under different circumstances, placed in their hands, but which they can no longer use to their own honor or our interest, and seek constituencies whom they can serve with credit to themselves and advantage to the electors.