MAUNCIATUROTO.

Wairoa Bell, Volume V, Issue 200, 2 June 1893, Page 2

MAUNCIATUROTO.

(From our own Correspondent). Politics seem to be the all absorbing topic of the day in this district just now; what with meetings and discussions on the merits of the prospective candidates for M.P. and County Council. We hear of little else, and it seems as though the one thing to be thought about and talked of for the next six months is to be the choosing of a Councillor for the Wairoa Riding. It does seem ridieul - ous that a small settlement like this, whose number of ratepayers is not more than eighty or ninety, cannot agree to elect some one for that office whom they think will work for the good of the district as a whole. But in some things it seems as though common sense and justice were pushed aside in order to make way for party feeling. There is now great demand for all available voting power, and the Rolls are being filled up, or one might say stuffed, with wives and sons; and properties are being divided into no end of lots and sections. There should be great demand for surveyors and lawyers if the business is genuine, but I fear-there is a good deal of the bogus about it. .Another grand idea has lately been struck too, the people at the lower end of (he settlement want a public Hall, and have thought and suggested that a halfpenny rate might be struck to raise funds for the building of tUat,in their opinion, much needed structure.

The wonder is, that if Halls are such paying concerns, some enterprising individual has not built another private one. Coming to the point, there is no doubt that if a central position could be agreed upon and the various public institutions such as the Council office, the R. M. Court, the Post Office, Telephone and Bavingsbank removed to it, it would receive considerable support. The weather and the roads here are something terrible and so perhaps the less said about either the better, for I notice that the best tempered people suddenly put on a disgusted look as soon as that topic is started, Certainly the last month or six weeks has been very trying to both man and beast. The Church of England peoi>le are nowprovided with a resident Clergyman, the Rev. Horsfall, having been appointed to attend to the spiritual wants of this and other settlements in the parochial district of Paparoa. ITe will no doubt find his work rather hard, starting at this time of the year, and having only lately arrived in the Colony.