The Wairarapa Daily. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1881.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 3, Issue 902, 18 October 1881, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1881.

We have hoard with regret thai; the members of the now political association recently formed at iJastercon have been induced to sign a declaration that they will give their votes in accordance with the dictates of the association. Wo repeat that wo have heard this with regret, because it means that men who have had high privileges accorded to them by law have voluntarily surrendered them—thrfc they have yielded their liberties as electors and have forfeited the franchise of which they have been deemed worthy. Those who may Lave pledged themselves in this way are no longer free and independent electors—they are simply the slaves of an association. We have nothing to say against a political association so long as it does not demand from its adherents the surrender of their legal rights—so long as it is formed for the accomplishment of legitimate objects, It is permissible for any association to demand from its members a concurrence with the principles on which it is founded ; so far it may go, but no further, If, as in the present instance, it goes beyond this and pledges the votes of its constituents, it acts in open violation of the spirit of the electoral law and furnishes a strong argument in favor of restricting the liberal franchise which now obtains, A man's franchise is as much his private property as his wages are. His fellow-men may advise him as to how he may exercise the one and spend the other, but they are not justified in making him pledge himself to surrender the one or the other to the will of those with whom he may be associated. It will be said that those who have signed the declaration to which we refer have disfranchised themselves and that they are incapable of appreciating the political rights which the law has conferred upon them, and we can hardly see that any defence can be made to such charges, It is doubtless the case that many men have, by specious arguments, been misled into giving up a privilege which it was their duty to guard, but what can be said of those who have induced them to sign away their freedom 1 Will it not be said that they who come forward as the champions of the people and their liberties are the. first to turn the people into slaves and deprive them of the liberty which the law has given them 1 No man of high principle will ask any elector to pledge his vote in writing. The last general election will be fresh in the minds of many of our readers, Does any one of them recollect Mr George Beetham or Mr 0. Pharazyn ever asking a single elector to pledge his vote 1 We do not wish to infer that Mr Eenall, in whose interests the present political association has been formed, is responsible for the wrong that has been done in demanding an improper concession from electors. We have no reason for fixing the responsibility upon him, and we trust to hear him disavow it, because he has been wont in his public utterances to appeal to principles as his guide, and we hardly expect him to sanction this open -violation of a fundamental one, Vote by ballot is a cardinal point in the charter of the party with which Mr Eenall is allied, but what on earth is the value of the ballot-box if six weeks before an election comes off I the electors plfjgetheif.votes;!!) black:

its way into other parts of the colony, tint finger of scorn will be pointed by all true Liberals throughout New Zealand at those who have yielded up so readily their individual liberties. Wo have, we repeat, no objection to political organisations. They have a tendency to educate the people of the country, but if they be founded upon depriving them of their civil rights, they are instruments of tyranny which will debase rather than exalt those who trust in them.