MEMBER FOR WAKANUI.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 4, Issue 1109, 26 June 1882, Page 3

MEMBER FOR WAKANUI.

Tho Otago Daily Times writing of the new member (or Waltanui, says:— Mr Saunders has been defeated by Mr Ivesa, an extremely negativo sort of person, not because tho electors like Mr Ivess, but bccauso Mr Saun.ders is altogether too strong for their taste. Mr Ivess is,-we believe, a very respectable man, whoso mission hitherto has been to 1 start country newspapers in villages where thore did not appear to be any opening for that ..branch of enterprise, and, having started them, to sell them, and start spmo more in some other villagss. To our knowledge he has been at this business in all parts of the colony foi many years past and wo should think lie has probably acquired and sold more newspapers than any other three men in New Zealand, It is this pro. pensity. that has gained him his sobriquet of "the rjg-merchant." We understand that 1 Mr Ivess has always had a keen ambition to be in politics, and that his old infatuation (or the humbler sort of newspaper enterprise has been mainly the outcome of that ambi. tioji. Not possessing any of the ordinary qualifications for making a figure hefore the public, he has often brought himself suddenly into prominence in a quiet neighborhood by dropping in with a printing plant, bringing out a newspaper, and astonishing the rural folk into the belief that a man of consequence had come among them, Many years" ago he performed this feat on the West Coast of the North Island, and was ao elated by his Fiiccess that he stood for Parliament for the district of Egment in opposition to the (Jolouial Treasurer, Major Atkinson. Wo do not know whether he got any votes-we rather think not; hut we well remember the fuss that tho affair caused at the time, Ever sinco then Mr Ivess has been starting nowßpape-8 and tryir.g to get into Parliament whenever he saw anything like a chance, however poor; and now at last he has succeeded, What he means to do now he has gained the : goal of his ambition we cannot guess. He has not, as we gather from his speeches'and from all accounts ol him, the smallest .capacity for politics, and he is pa6t the brc for developing any. He will, in short, be neither better nor worse than nine out of ten of those around him | but will merely add one more to tho list of respectable nobodies who form the majority of the first Parliament elected on the residential suffrage, •