ELECTION GOSSIP.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 352, 3 December 1875, Page 3

ELECTION GOSSIP.

(Clippings.)

The 'Times' of Saturday last, has discovered that Mr. Leary and Mr. Smythiea are the candidates for Mount Ida. Mr. H. Clark has no intention of standing for Bruce. The ' Star ' reports that according to the Dunedin correspondent of a contemporary, who is evidently well informed on matters political, Sir. John Richardson will decline the invitation that is to be made to him to stand for Dunedin.

x Sir P. Dillon Bell has issued an address to the electors in which he says I entirely deny that we must choose between Separation or Federalism on the one hand, and Centralism on the other.

I belong to that party of politicians who afe Abolitionists and not Centralists—who mean by Abolition not central rule, but local management—who object to the disintegration of the existing Provincial divisions—who want to keep what is left of our Land fund, and hold what we can of our immense contribution to the revenue —who think that the crying want of the country is retrenchment in expenditure and simplicity of administration ; and who, however well they know that the public finance is in a critieaT state,' would yet far rather continue for ten years the financial shifts .and evasions of the past few sessions, than let the whole business of the country be ever carried up to Wellington. : _ A return to Provincialism as it was is impossible; but I hold that no political danger looming ahead is at all equal to the danger of trying to set up a new Provincial system in its place. The Centralists, pure and simple, will again hail a cry for Separation with | delight, as they have ever done bei fore. I wish to speak with respect [ of any proposal for Otago that come 3 from Mr. Macandrew; but it is as certain now aa it has always been that no Separation Bill nor Federal Bill will :ever be passed in both Houses of our Parliament as at present constituted; and. that a Separation struggle can only [play into the hancta of the "few yield up North and South alike:to a. Central Bureaucratic organisation, already too compact, too secret, and too powerful. Must this great Province be forever storn by internal dissension ? Is there jno possible common ground on which we. may at length cease to present'the silly show of an eternally divided body, powerless before those who from other Provices bring in every session a united phalanx on every "question that touches their interests ? It is on the hope that one may be found, that I seek a place in the next Parliament.