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TO THE THAMES ELECTORS.

(Per favour of the Evening Star.)

Gentlemen,—We should at all times, but more especially in the present critical position of New Zealand, exercise active and vigilant circumspection in the selection of our Parliamentary representatives. Let the candidates for our suffrages be submitted to the most searching examination, and tested by all fair means. His profession, occupation, or business; his antecedents; his past career and associations ; his political and moral character—* are all factors by which his fitness for the sacred trust he seeks can be determined. Applying the first of these crucial, tests to one of our candidates, it will be ■ observed that lawyers very seldom make good legislators, and scarcely ever great statesmen. Their minds are too circumscribed by conventional usages and judicial training to deal comprehensively with great enterprises. The calls upon ttair talents are so sudden, numerous/ amP abrupt, as to leave little or no time for study or preparation; and what is worse than all, their business frequently engages them in arts and callings to which their tastes are most repugnant, but which insensibly influence their judgments and characters. If a member of the Legislature, he creeps with a tortoise slowness through the wearisome intricacy of the equity of private right in land, and in a few days after, at a " sympathy "meeting, he is borne along in a torrent of indignant eloquence in defence of some Land Leaguers. Now he describes with the gravity of a landscape gardener the tortuous windings of a mill stream, and now expatiates over the desolate hearth and broken fortunes of some "son of an old colonist." Turning about again to the High Court of Parliament, he proves that private property in land is public robbery, and shortly after, in another Court, he maintains with palpable clearness that his clients right to thousands of acres of the people's estate is based upon the principles of eternal equity. If fed by the insurance company he will prove that the insured doceased caused his own death by not eating lemon with his oysters; and.then in another case, he will argue that stabbing and head punching are venial offences, the result perhaps of a little political excite* inent iv a high spirited psople. These are all cl&eer efforts, aud no doubt com-

mand consummate powers of the head of him who makes them, but this enforced habit of shifting mikes the lawyer unreliable and undesirable ; therefore as the representative of the working classes, the electors will do wivSe in preferring stedfast honesty to the most brilliant and versatile talent. Our members must struggle with unrelaxiog efforts for the radical reforms the country needs, and an honest citizen, however humble his talents, who will perform these things is immeasurably preferable to a clever lawyer, who by profession, education, and training, is incapable of understanding and indisposed to execute those great reforms required and asked for by the labouring classes. Sincerity and truth are the foundation of all political and social virtues, and experience shows that these essential qualities are incompatible with a lawyers idiosyncrasy—l am, &c, vVm. Hazlitt.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/THS18811018.2.15.2

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3995, 18 October 1881, Page 2

Word count
Tapeke kupu
518

TO THE THAMES ELECTORS. Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3995, 18 October 1881, Page 2

TO THE THAMES ELECTORS. Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3995, 18 October 1881, Page 2

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