SIR JULIUS VOGEL’S DEFEAT.

Patea Mail, Volume VI, Issue 506, 7 April 1880, Page 3

SIR JULIUS VOGEL’S DEFEAT.

Onr Agent-General in England has been contesting the small seaport of Falmouth for a seat in the British Parliament. Flo has not succeeded, . The Wanganui Herald treats his defeat very fairly .in the following comments: “ To profess any sympathy with Sir Julios Vogel in his defeat for Falmouth would be to offer him not the consolation of real sorrow, but only the irony of affected compliment to undoubted merit already recognised. So far £rora thinking the result just telegraphed to us a cause of regret, we think the Colony is to be congratulated that the officer hold-

ing the important positio'h of AgentGeneral in England is not to be hampered with the political responsibilities which a man of Sir Julius Vogel’s temperament could hardly have escaped, had he succeeded in gaining admission to the Imperial Parliament. The atmosphere of active politics is so congenial to his tastes and inclination that he would have become quickly absorbed in the conflicts with which he was immediately surrounded, and ex necessitate, betrayed into a considerable measure of neglect of the important duties with which we are most concerned. It is not without some degree of compunction that we witness a check in the onward career of a distinguished man, who has achieved no mean celebrity in every public appointment which he has yet had the good fortune to fill. Sir Julius Vogel has long outlived the detraction with which his sudden rise to fame and the success of hih bold projects were for a time assailed by men of equal ambition but very unequah talents and powers of administration. The duties of the Agent-General’s department are arduous and continuous enough to require the undivided attention of the officer appointed to superintend them, and the Colony pays for it and will be satisfied with nothing less than the whole energies such a servant has at his disposal. After this demand was met, the Falmouth constituency would be a most complacent set of people if they could derive any profit from the remainder. It is therefore only from that spirit of selfishness which so largely enters into the composition of human nature, that wo are not grieved at what Sir Julius Vogel probably laments as a misfortune. Falmouth has lost an able, courageous, and aspiring representative, and New Zealand retains the services of a capable administrator of its home interests.”