MAYOR AND CORPORATION.

West Coast Times, Issue 626, 26 September 1867, Page 4

MAYOR AND CORPORATION.

(fbom: the despatch, sept. 21.) The Municipal Council Elections will hi all probability be, the main theme of discussion during the next fortnight. They will be taken under the Ordinance assented to by his Honor the Superintendent on the 12th day of January last, and whichjaas since that date constituted the law of the incorporated citizens of Hokitika. We presume that even the audacity of the " Evening Star" will not now venture to reiterate the assertipn ! in all the emphasis of italics and capitals, that this Ordinance "is illegal." Arthur Tanner would have been very glad yesterday to have found that it was so ; and Mr Rees, the very able counsel of that unfortunate young man, would have been happy for professional reasons to have established the fact which he labored hard to do, though with total unsucoess. Much had been said for days before of the coming demonstration to the confusion of all Town Councillors, and of one or two expectant Mayors, that the Municipal Council that has been levying and collecting rates, appointing officers, and even daring to prosecute them for tire embezzlement of pnblic funds, had no legal existence ; that it was a mere myth; that its members were pretenders and impos- , ters — usurpers of powers that did not be- i long to them. We wonder whether we have heard Hie last of this nonsense now. I Whether the fact will any longer be studiously concealed or evaded, that the Hokitika Municipal Corporation Ordinance, 1867, was duly assented to in accordance with constitutional form ; that in the speech delivered by his Honor in closing the session 1866-7 occur these words — " On behalf of his Excellency the Governor, I have assented to the Hokitika Municipal Corporation Ordinance, 1867." This assent was duly gazetted, and the Ordinance has since been left to its operation, his Excellency the Governor having, under the advice of his Executive Council, after correspondence between the Colonial Secretary and Mr Moorhouse, declined to disallow it.

All these facts were perfectly well known to every writer on this subject, before yesterday's trial conclusively proved how effectively legal the Ordinance was to punish a defaulting public servant elected and acting under it j and the continued misrepresentation that has been indulged iv could only therefore have been wilful. No doubt some persons have been more or less impressed by the constant repetition of the cry 'of " illegality." It is true that the correspondence we have referred to between Mr Stafford and Mr Moorhouse took place, and it may be further true that some of the powers purporting to be conferred on the Corporation by certain clauses of the Ordinance are not sufficiently conveyed to them, as being beyond the authority of the Provincial Council to convey — ultra vires as the Attorney-General has it. But the Municipal Council has so far exercised no illegal functions. Something has been said of the Town Clerk replying to enquirers that some acts of the Council were done under the old Ordinance, aome under the new, and the inference has been drawn that the Council itself did not know under what authority they acted. The simple fact of the case is that the rates hitherto collected, and those still in process of collection, were struck under the old Ordinance before it was repealed by the new Act ; but under the latter the prosent Council has succeeded to all the rights conferred by the former. The Canterbury Ordinance, Session 14, No. 2, was repealed by the Hokitika Ordinance, 1867, but the acts done under it were not invalidated, and their legal consequences still survive.

Enough however of this argument, of which we trust we have now heard the last. The new elections are before us, and it behoves the citizens to consider "vrell what men they should elect to serve them.

At a special meetiug to be held on Friday morning next the four Councillors to retire are to be ballotted for.

Out of the nine Councillors who will hold office after the election of the ninth October, the Mayor of Hokitika wilL have to be chosen; and in voting for candidates for the Council each ratepayer should remember that he is possibly voting for the future Chief Magistrate of the town. We shall say no more on this personal part of the subject until we have the whole list of candidates before us, beyond this — that two essential points must be observed in the selection of Mayor : — first, that he be intimately associated with the commercial interests of the town, and, secondly, that he is a man capable of maintaining the position of Chief Magistrate with dignity.

A late Lord Chancellor was fond of a joke, and sometimes had tables turned upon himself. A few days before his death he met a barrister, who had grown very stout of late, and remarked, " Why, you are getting as fat as a porpoise." "Fit companion, my lord, for the Great Seal," was the ready repartee.

A Gentleman saw a man in the neighborhood of Paris, gathering what appeared to be mushrooms. Seeing that they were not mushrooms, he warned tho man with some warmth, telling htm that they were poisonous. The countryman smiled, and replied, "Thanks, monsieur, for your kindness ; but lam not going to eat them, but to sell them."

An Uotobtuitate Simile. — In a copy o the "United States Gazette," published in 1779, we find an account of a flag-presentation which may edify that Harge portion of our population who have latterly participated in tittle affairs of that sort. On the day after the battle of Fort Moultrie, in 1772, Mrs Elliott presented to Colonel Moultrie's Second South Carolina Regiment a banner. Surrounded by the beauty and the fashion of the day, the Colonel stepped forth, and receiving the flag from Mrs E., acknowledged it in a very appropriate and eloquent speech. In closing he turned suddenly to his men, and said — "My gallant companies, . you see the reward of courage and fortitude ! You have fought and have conquered, and the brave fellows who fell in the carnage of yesterday are now in heaven riding in tbeir chariots like the T-rydsvU!"

C O.'S