THE NEW MEMBERS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4809, 21 August 1876, Page 3

THE NEW MEMBERS.

SKETCHED BY ONE OF THEMSELVES. No. VI. — A Thames Member.

Mr. William Kowe possesses many points of interest, ami, regarding his past history as a picture, it will be found to present a variety of views no more wonderful than charming to lovers of the curious in nature. Perhaps this might bo said of almost every life in the colonies ; but the present case in a way rises above a few, like a very tall man in a crowd. Mr. Kowe is an. old identity. He has the appearance of it« Without having any pretensions to pol’ : h, he is intensely respectable, and would b /e- you know_ it. _ He has not perhaps" more poetry in his nature than might be found in a pump; but in practical wisdom ho is not by any means deficient. He is not an eloquent man, and his speeches might at times convey the idea to a critical mind that his acquaintance with Kindley Murray in his youth had been limited ; but as a speaker he is not to be despised altogether—no man is who will occasionally talk sound sense and make his audience feel he means what he says. Moreoever, he has a happy talent for speaking on any subject, no matter what it may be, and at the shpi test possible notice; and from one point of view it is no disparagement on his efforts that he does not always understand his subject. _ Mr. Kowe hails from a mining district m England, and knows perhaps more about coalsancf quartz than politics. Having arrived in this colony at a date in our little history the exact position of which he would not probably, for obvious reasons, care to mention —for I think I do not inaccurately assert that Mr. Kowe will he in his ideas ever green and sensible to this life s joys having arrived here, he made for himself a position in connection with mines and miuers. He is well known in Auckland, and was at one time connected with the coal mines in the Waikato, and report says that he has, alone and unassisted, like Joe Bounderby, amassed some wealth. Xu Auckland, too, he became a political leader aa member of the Provincial Council and Executive. But the Thames is the scene in which this new member has figured most prominently. He was a mine manager there for many years, and has only recently severed his connection with mining, practically, his last office being that of manager of the Thames Company, which without doubt in one particular was like the Anglo Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Insurance Company—it never paid the shareholders much, whatever it may have done for the promoters. Mr. Kowe was at one time a lay preacher of the Wesleyan Church, and in the early days of the Thames did the State some service by looking after the souls of the miners. He did not, as a less faithful man might have done, let the want of a church stand in his way, but was known frequently to deliver moral lectures and hopeful essays in a back-parlor owned by Captain Butt, who, appropriately enough, was a vendor of beer and comforts of a like nature, administered, not with a desire for gain, but in a secondary way to aid in the development of gold. No man in that country was ever known to have anything at heart but the general prosperity of the place and the welfare of the people in it. Well, for a long time it may be said, Mr. Kowe breathed forth piety and a few heaven-born phrases he kept on hand. Men owed him; much, indeed, for he was too liberal to be restricted by narrow limits. He favored all alike. But it transpired that his people proved ungrateful. They professed to see in this gentleman idiosyncrasies incompatible with a regular yearning after their particular religion. Time had crept on apace, and now the habitation of the patriotic Butt was rejeeted for what a local newspaper reporter called “a lofty fabric ” —he meant a church. Mr, Kowe, who (it may be recorded as a touching fact in this history) was known by his intimates as “ Billy,” then preached in the church, but in the activity of a renewed desire to enter public life, Mr. Rowe desisted from the telling of sacred truths. He devoted himself to public meetings, was a pattern chairman, and had a good deal of influence with the mining population—at one time, indeed, he was exexeeedingly popular. He was manager of the Caledonian mine in the zenith of its glory, when the men employed by the company were working on a wall of gold. But he experienced varying fortunes; and this more particularly in respect to his public career. It may be confidently asserted, however, that Mr. Rowe as a public man is honest —honest in his thorough belief in and anxiety to promote the interests of his district. He has given evidence of this by open-hearted speculation on the Thames at all times, and even latterly he has done so to an extent that might surprise while it would command sympathy and respect. But in the nature of things it was not possible for the public mind to be ever the same: thus he .was popular and unpopular by turns. He is ambitious, and in that respect if in no other resembles his colleague, Sir George Grey, who, by the way, would seem to have been for some time in personal communication with posterity, so often is the word in his mouth. Being ambitious, therefore, Mr. Rowe has made several attempts at obtaining seats in local government institution. He put up for the Provincial Council, his old arena, and was defeated. His popularity was on the wane at this time. -Moreover, the opposition committee knew their business, and employed touters and creeping things to settle the business for their men. These latter displayed their smartness on one occasion by disarranging Mr. Rowe’s posters; asthus,whenabill was posted upbeseechingthe public to “Vote for Kowe,” the other side by the use of more paste, paper, and printer’s ink made the bill, “ Don’t vote for Rowe and the increase of gold duty.” Latterly he was elected to a seat-in the Municipal Council of the Thames. But Mr. Rowe always had an ambition to be a member of the New Zealand Parliament. This we might pardon under any circumstances, because ambition is a good quality, without it no man will effect much in this world; and there are people in this world who would be bold enough to say that to be a member of this or any other general legislature is not so great an honor after all. Howbeit Mr. Rowe has attained his wish. He is now a full blown rose in the garden of his fancy, and although he may not be so delicate a flower or so carefully nurtured as some of those that surround him, yet he may do as much—nay, perhaps, more—for the people he represents than many of them. Thus much, then, for Mr. Kowe, a new member, of whom it may be said that while a few much better representatives might be found, it would be equally possible to find very many worse.