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New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4434, 5 June 1875, Page 2

The pending contest for the representation of Wairau in the House of Representatives is not without its comic side. Mr. Ward, the local candidate, recently addressed the electors at the town of Blenheim, and complained that Mr. Moorhousb, when alluding to the imperfect state of the surveys of the province, “ looked very hard at him, as though he “ thought that as he was an old surveyor “ho had some hand in it and he there and then made public confession of participation in the survey blunders. But of course, it was no fault of the surveyors ; it all came of the faulty system in Nelson. Now, we do not mean to say that Mr. Ward was not quite correct in everything he said, and as “cheap and “ nasty ” appears to have been the order of the day in prosecuting the early surveys of the colony, there was no reason why he should take the matter to himself. Major Palmer certainly did not allude to Mr. Ward, in his report on the surveys of the colony ; and although Mr. Moor-

house appears to have “ caught his eye,” we are convinced he had not the most remote idea of imputing any blame to his opponent. If Mr. Ward had not made this revelation, the bulk of the population would have been ignorant of his early services in the colonial field. But there is something irresistibly comic in the notion that because Mr. Moorjiouse “looked very hard at him ; ” he should take his general remarks, which were strictly true, ashaving a personalapplication. Suppose Mr. Mooriiousb had looked on the other side, would Mr. Ward have accepted the fact of his having been studiously overlooked, as an acknowledgment of his non-participation in the blunders of the early Nelson surveys ? If so slight a cause as a hard look excites his resentment, wo pity his condition should he happen to bo returned for Wairau to the General

Assembly. But the election is likely to turn upon purely local interests. Mr. Ward’s speeches, and the remarks of his supporters, are of the same ‘ 1 poroohial ” I typo. The local'candidate is the incarnation of Wairau, They do not want any ‘

reflected heat from , Wellington ; they I should derive light and heat from themselves, and if Mr. Wabd be elected, in all probability Blenheim will- become the centre of the universe. At all events, it will become the centre of the railway system of the colony, and they will magnanimously "attach "Wellington and the North Island to Picton by a ferry boat. Hear what Mr. Waed says on the subject of the Picton and Blenheim railway, which has too many curves, and will, be much too slow for his enterprising genius. He said : At the Bush, Mr. Moorhouse had said a good deal about the railway, and had told the people he was in favor of taking all the kinks out of It. Although it had been made by some of Mr. Moorhouse's friends, he found a great deal of fault with it, and when a venerable old gentleman with hardly any hair on his head, got up and asked him if ho would endeavor to get the railway altered, Mr. Moorhouse, with a face as solemn as a bishop, said, yes, he was quite prepared to try and get all the kinks taken out of the railway; but, he added, he might not be able to do it in one session, it might perhaps take two or even three. Well, anybody could say as much as that. Now, he had a scheme, and he thought the Ministry would listen to him as soon as they would to anybody else, and he should take care to bring the matter before thera, by which ho thought all the improvements of the line .would be brought about. This present line should form part of the through line of railway from one end of the colony to the other —Picton should be the ferry. From that point the boats should run to AVellington, from which there was no reason why we should be moro than three hours distant. Making this part of the through line would soon take the kinks out; travellers would not put up with ten or twelve miles an hour over the last sixteen or eighteen miles, after they had been going at from thirty to forty all the previous part of the way. It was very important that this should be impressed on the Government, as this line would open up nearly all the available country, and would be the easiest to construct. He believed the proposed plan of uniting the Nelson and Foxhill line, with a branch to the "West Coast, and so on to Canterbury, showed great ignorance of the country, and as he before observed, this was a matter which should be shown to the Government. The completion of the scheme would do more to warm us up than all the advancement of Wellington, and we should get our share of the reflected heat as well. We wonder what the Minister for Public Works will say to this development of his railway system ; but Mr. Wabd's modesty is equal to his faith. He believes the Scriptures : '' Ask, and it shall be given " you ; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and " it shall be opened unto you :" and we venture to think, if he redeems his pledge to the Wairau electors, that by virtue of it, he will become a very troublesome supporter of the Government. Mr. Ward is opposed to higher education. " They did not want a grammar " school unless to teach themselves gram- " mar," whereat the meeting laughed. " Every boy should be taught to read, " writ a- and cvnher," and then if he failed to make his mark in the world-it was not for want of a fair start. Grammar schools, colleges, universities : of what use were they except to nip the budding genius of youth ! He would none of them. The youths of Marlborough would have a fair chance,'if they were elected to the Assembly. They would have their provincial institutions to train them to statesmanship ; they would have primary schools to perfect their education ; and last, but not least, Wairau would be the pivot of the great colonising policy of 1870, on which the railway system should turn. Anything more grotesquely absurd or narrow than the views expressed at Mr. Ward's meetings we have seldom read. No wonder the Marlborough Express declares that it is ashamed to see its columns filled with such petty vestry politics, and ill-natured attacks upon one of the foremost men this colony has produced. If the election should turn in favor of Mr. Ward, the Wairau constituency will stultify itself in the eyes of the colony. Whatever may have been Mr. Seymour's merits, he at all events took a comprehensive view of public questions, but Mr. Waed's ideas are bounded by the district in which he resides.