The Government have acted neither with dignity nor discretion in regard to the Bill for amending the law relating to the qualification of electors and the Bill providing for supplementary electoral rolls before the general election. The first occupied a prominent position in the speech with which his Excellency opened Parliament. The second is an absolute necessity, if the country is to express its opinion at the next election on the great questions now before it. Yet the Government have courted defeat on one measure, and quietly suffered the other to disappear. There are painful symptoms apparent that the Ministerial policy is to seek safety for themselves, not to regard that safety as merely secondary in importance to the policy which they consider best for the colony. Or is it not possible that they are ignorant of thinking any policy beneficial to New Zealand, but are merely ready to adopt that which a majority in the House will tell them is the best 1 There ia no necessity here for raising the question whether an amendment of the law relating to the qualification of electors is necessary, though on that question there could be no difficulty in giving a strong and decided opinion. The point for consideration is that by the speech which the Governor, as the mouthpiece of the Ministry, delivered on the 20th of July, it was plainly and in ho ambiguous terms affirmed that in view of the proposed constitutional changes, and of the approaching termination of tho existence of the present Parliament, a Bill for amending the law relative to the qualification of electors was necessary, and would be one of the Ministerial measures. And now, yielding doubtless to the expressed opinions of some half-a-dozen of “ tho creeping “ things” of party, the Government have literally invited the rejection of a measure which they declared was a necessary sequence of the Abolition Bill, and have withdrawn one without which the general election will not fully represent the opinion of tho country.
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New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4532, 29 September 1875, Page 2
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334Untitled New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4532, 29 September 1875, Page 2
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