The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY). SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1879.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5759, 13 September 1879, Page 2

The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY). SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1879.

It is admitted on all sides that the new Parliament is unlikely to compare at all favorably with previous in respect to the culture and social standing of the new members. We hope that this evil prognostication may not be verified, and shall try to think well of all the untried men as long as they will allow us to do so. Thera is, however, one new member who, we think, deserves a special mention at our hands. He comes before the public with a somewhat unenviable reputation, despite the fact that his presence and companionship was especially desired GtSDRGE Grey some four years ago. Writing from Auckland to a Maori elector in the Bay of Islands, in a letter which has been preserved in the apfwmdix of the journals of the House, the Premier said, on the 28th December, 1875:

My dear friend Heta te Ha&ra,—l have given this letter to .John Lundon that you may show kindness to him, because I wish this man to be a companion for me. —-From your loving friend ’ ' G. Grey. But for this remarkable passport to the affections of other supporters of Sir G. Grey, we might have been content to let by-go. aGs be by-goaes in respect to Mr. John Lundon. But with such a powerful fi jcommendatiou in his favor to act as iyn introduction, we think it only right, on public, grounds, that the opinion of t he Royal Commissioner appointed to en quire "into the Bay of Islands scandal shoiil i be placed in. apposition to Sir G. Grey’. ff : open avowal of personal friendship for the new member for Mongonui. In his report on the subject, Mr. Bryce said :

I have already * pointed out that Mr. don’s apparent ob jeot in getting up the Maori claims was to rei ider the electoral roll more favorable to himse If. With that object in new, it is clear from bis own evidence that the questions of whether the claimants were qualified, or whetl ier they-signed the claims, or whether the t 'hums were duly attested, were matters of co; nplete indifference to him so long as the sup reme object was gained. Mi* Lundon has hin iself permitted a native in his ’ presence to si; {a the names of twenty absent persons to e lectoral claims, and has

caused the forms so prepared to be taken away to a distance to be signed by another person as attesting witness. Very many of the chu-cus preferred were certainly never signed by the persons purporting to have signed them, and false attestation has been the rule, not the exception.

And a little further on he gave even further proof of the extent to which the electoral roll had been stuffed with the names of “ bogus” electors by interested persons. The commissioner wrote :

I think, then, that Mr. John London has for years past deliberately endeavored to place persons on the electoral roll for the Mongonui and Bay of Islands district, with the view of rendering it more favorable to himself, and without caring whether such persons were, qualified or not. It is my opinion that of tht 373 • Liras which he caused to be preferred in 1878, four-fifths had no legal qualification, and that of the remaining fifth many were vicious and invalid by reason of the mode in which the claims were prepared. We think that these two extracts ought to satisfy anyone as to the character of the new member for Mongonui. Judging by what we hear outside it seems unlikely that he will be very cordially received by some of his brother members of Parliament.

Since Mr. Eryce visited the district, but before his report was made, another Revision Court has sat. We believe that the anti-Lundon party, knowing that a Parliamentary inquiry generally results in some decided course of action being taken, paid but little heed to the Revision Court. The evidence taken by the Royal Commissioner had shown the whole proceedings of the Court to be practically nothing more than a disgraceful farce.. Referring to the officers of the Revision Court, Mr. Bryce said :

I think that both of Mr. Lawler’s celebrated, or notorious, decisions were unsound in law, and that his capacity is not equal to the performance of the duties of revising officer in a district where difficult questions may arise. I think that Mr. Baker, the new registration officer at Russell, is altogether unfit for that position. I think that the conduct of the Government in removing Mr. Williams from the position of registration officer at so unfortunate a time was inconsiderate, injudicious, and objectionable.

It is no wonder, therefore, if the interested persona in the district declined to again submit to the jurisdiction of a Court whqae chief officers had been denounced in such emphatic terms as those used by the Royal Commissioner. The impartiality and the authority of the Court had been' questioned, and the House of Representatives had agreed to inquire into the decisions which had been appealed against. The appeal had been upheld by the Commissioner, but the judgment of the higher Court of Appeal —viz., Parliament—had not then been delivered. From the time when Mr. Bryce’s report was published until now, nothing whatever has been done, so far as we know, to remedy the disgraceful state of affairs exposed by Mr. Bryce in his report. Even on the 7th of August last, when Mr. Hobbs asked what action had been taken by the Government in reference to that report, there was a dead silence on the Government benches, and Mr. Hobbs answered his own question by saying “Absolutely none;” and his statement was left unchallenged. It was clearly impossible for aggrieved persons who had impugned the honesty and impartiality of the officers of the Revision Court again to lodge objections in the hands of the same officers while their character was still “under a cloud.” We have heard of no appointment of new officers to that Revision Court since 1878, and if the same officers again sat in 1879, the holding of the Court was simply a disgrace to the Government and an insult to the electors.

We know nothing of Mr. John Lundon personally, but it is clear that he owes his seat to an unchecked system of roll-stuffing such as cannot possibly be

justified. The Government might have dismissed the .officers whoso conduct was complained of; or they might have allowed the House to purge the roll, when Mr. Beetham moved that steps should be taken to do so. This the Premier dis-

tinctly declined to do, probably because he was just as anxious as ever for the companionship of Mr. Lundon, and thanks to the presence of some 375 bogus electors on the roll, his earnest wish will be gratified. ■ '