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New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 747, 11 June 1853, Page 1

ONEHUNGA PENSIONERS' SETTLEMENT. r fMIE Committee recently appointed at a -*- public meeting of the Pensioners of the above settlement, assembled on Wednesday evening, in one of the cottages. Mr. Patrick King was called to the chair, and, after some preliminary observations, requested the Secretary pro tcm. to read the following extract from a leading article from the Southern Cross newspaper of the 9.Bth November, 1851: Premium upon Military Insuboumn.vtiox. The objection to Ihc Pensioner force being entrusted wilh the full privileges of the elective franchise, was first pointed out in the memorial from the people of Auckland for Representative Institutions, lately presented to the House of Commons by Sir William Moles.worlh. The same objection we have already strongly urged wilh reference to the Municipal Charter, which, we think, very unfairly confers much more power on these semi-military bodies, than on any other portion of the Borough of Auckland. These objections we have no intention of repeating at present. We merely again allude to the subject for the purpose of pointing out one very important feature which formerly escaped our notice. We allude to the tendency which the political privileges referred to, have to destroy the efficiency of the corps as a military body, tending almost to beget a spirit of insubordination, if not to cause a subversion of all military rules and regulations. This will at once be obviously, perhaps painfully, apparent by pointing to the recent electioneering contest* at the Pensioner village of Howick, where the dignity (?) of a Councillorship for the Rorough of Auckland was keenly disputed by Captain McDonald, the commander of that corps, and James White, a full private in the Captain's Company ; the private being so strenuously supported that he was within ten votes of ousting his commanding officer. However repugnant to British jurisprudence, to confer the same political privileges upon an enrolled soldiery as upon civilian colonists, the objection in a military point of view, appears to us to be altogether insuperable. What will the War Office say, when they are informed of the undignified contest to which we now allude What a delectable illustration of the congeniality of military discipline and electioneering license might have been presented to an admiring public, had private White taken example from the canvassers of our West and Middle Town Wards, and let off at the expense of his Captain, a few of those squibs, which, in town were thrown about so freely. Could any lover of the purity of election find fault wilh him had he clone so? How edifying, how instructive it would have been to his brother privates to have exhibited to them how utterly unfilled their Commanding Officer was to represent their interests and opinions in the Borough Councils. To have shown how much under the influence of the Government that Officer was likely to be —how unwilling to oppose any measures that might be brought forward antagonistic to Government views.—To have demonstrated how much more independent he, private White, would prove — how much more readily he would use his influence, should he he elected, to obtain redress of Pensioner wrongs. How fearlessly he would represent the grievous hardship, the cruel injustice to privates being arbitrarily and oppressively compelled to attend at Sunday Parades, which dragged many of them from a great distance, causing them to lose perhaps a day or two's work in consequence; perhaps of sacrificing their situations with their employers. Here would have been a splendid exhibition of Military morale, which might have been rendered still more piquant by the Candidate's taking occasion to impress upon his brother burgesses the special hardships inflicted upon the Howick corps by placing them at such a great distance from the settled portions of the borough. The Candidate might further have graphically shown the great number of paupers in the Corps—the number of empty houses—and invalids;—the destroying influence of the Public Houses which have been fostered in the settlement, and erected in defiance of the prolost of the late Commanding Officer, Major Gray, etc., etc.—ln short, private White might have waxed virtuously eloquent to the great delight, if not to Ihe improved subordination of his brother privates, as well to the deep mortification and annoyance of his Commanding officer. Nor is the contest referred to a solitary one. There was a similar contest between the same parties a short lime ago, for the honour of the Wardenship of the Hundred. The voles in this instance were equal, and the Commanding officer was only saved from being defeated by one of his private soldiers through the casting vole of the Commissioner of Crown Lands. There can be no question that these unseemly contests are wholly subversive of all military command,—and we bring the subject thus prominently forward, in order that it may receive that consideration from the War Office which il so eminently deserves. The whole question of the Pensioners' civil rights requires to be reconsidered and defined. At present, those rights and their military duties are not merely not sufficiently distinguished, but are frequently unjustly and oppressively jumbled; and the inevitable consequence is a continual jarring of the one with the other. The men as they advance in the knowledge and use of their civil rights, are unfitting themselves for military subordination — the one being apparently incompatible with the other. After the reading of this article, the Secretary read the committee's address, which was received wilh rapturous applause, and carried unanimously. Mr. Thomas O'Crien then moved the following resolution, which was seconded by Mr, James Warner, and carried unanimously. "That the best thanks of this committee be tendered to the Editor and Proprietors of the Neiv-Zealander for the liberal manner in which the Pensioners have been allowed to plead their own cause in the shape of reports of meetings and correspondence through the columns of that journal. And also in an especial manner for the Editor's defence of