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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5276, 21 February 1878, Page 2

The result of the late election in this city will astonish people at a distance. Subjoined we publish an extract from the Dunedin Kveniny Star, which will repay perusal. Our contemporary has not mistaken the opinion of the majority of the people of Wellington, despite the return of Mr. Barton. The result of the election was a surprise to nineteen out of every twenty in the community. Up to the morning of the election, tin; successful candidate was regarded as not having the shadow of a chance ; so much did this opinion prevail, that over eight hundred electors did not record their votes. Ministers themselves must have been agreeably surprised at the result of the polling. Hundreds who would have voted for Mr. Pearce regarded his return as so certain that they did not take tin trouble of going to the polling-booth. The Star of Saturday last says:—“Notwithstanding the enthusiaitic reception of the Premier’s exposition of policy by the citizens of Wellington, as duly reported in the Ministerial organs, it is very significant that Mr. Pearce, who avowedly will he in opposition, stands so well with the electors as to render his return a certainty, even in the opinion of the Otayo Daily Times' ‘ special,’ which in tin's ease, being given much against the grain, may probably be relied upon. Sir George Grey, by force of Ids eloquence, carries his audience with him at all times ; but when they afterwards come to reflect upon what lie has said, they find there is very little which the mind can grasp, and that upon matters of serious political import there has either been a studied avoidance of disquisition, or such a glamor lias been thrown around that the form is not discernible. He is great in flashes of rhetoric, which divert attention from the weakness of Ids argument, and speaks with such sincerity of conviction that one is almost angry with one's self for being unable, on analysis, to discover what there is in it after all. The Wellington people applaud and admire, as all must do who listen, but, when it comes to voting, prefer the ‘solid pudding’ to the ‘ flummery,’ and do not evidently care to trust their interests to any nominee of a Government, who, if they are any way true to their principles, will, by fair means or foul, bring about .Separation, with Auckland as the Northern Capital, and who have already, in more ways than one, evinced a determination to threw all possible

difficulties in the way of the successful development of local self-government, and especially to set their faces against the county system. We supptse it is the hopelessness of the thing which has prevented any even moderately suitable candidate contesting the seat in the Ministerial interest.”

In another column we publish a letter from one of Wellington’s earliest settlers, in reference to the establishment of the eight hours’ system of labor in this colony. We do not for a moment desire to disparage the efforts of those who first advocated the system in Melbourne, but it will afford some information on this subject when we mention that the eight hours’ system has been in operation in Wellington since 1810, and within a few months after the establishment of the colony, some twenty years before the system was generally recognised in Melbourne. As for Sydney, we are uot aware that the eight hours’ movement has taken root there till this day. The early settlers of this part of New Zealand were ardently imbued with liberal ideas of the rights of labor—ideas which were far in advance of those prevailing in 1810. It will be safe to say that iu no part of her Majesty’s dominions was eight hours accepted as a full working day for artisans and laborers before that date.