THE ELECTION OF SUPERINTENDENT.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 562, 2 October 1869, Page 3

THE ELECTION OF SUPERINTENDENT.

(To the Editor of the Westport Times.) Sib,—Lately we have had much talk here about the election of a Superintendent for the Nelson- Province. There seems a lamentable tendency among many electors to throw away the small opportunity now presented forcibly to express their earnest and united conviction. For months there has been a general protest against misgovernment, and several plans projected to remedy the evil. Now I ask is it befitting us to place jri nomination amau likely to prove himself either mentally deficient or morally delinquent ? A candidate for such a post should be above suspicion. If you ask some electors why they encourage unworthy persons in their candidature, they answer —" It is merely a matter of form—anything.to keep Curtis out." To make it a matter of form is unfair to the person to whom you present the requisition; and what could be more likely to strengthen those against whom we contend than such ill-consid-ered opposition ? A good man may come forward, and in that event, being unpledged, we are free to act. At any event, by placing our votes on record for a worthy person, though defeated, we shall not be disgraced. With your permission I would like to make a few remarks on the general question pertinent to this issue. A 6tudy of the science of government will, I think, teach this, that superior offices should be filled by men chosen from bodies already elected, and an appeal to a council would be better than to the people of a province. I know the intense hostility the enunciation of such an opinion is likely to provoke, but as I do not solicit popular favor, but address the reasoning few. I will state the reasons for that conviction which extensive reading, much reflection, and a variety of observations have corroborated. Most of those who have written diseriminatively of the United States of America have remarked as observable the very decided superiority of the members cf its Senate, to those of the House of Eepresentatives, and no reason has been suggested to explain this, other than the fact of the former being chosen by the Legislatures of the several States. Compare again the fifth-rate men who are generally chosen for President, with their Chief Secretaries. I have but to name Harrison, Taylor, Polk, Pearee, Lincoln, and Grant, to remind you in what unfit hands power may be placed where a degraded suffrage determines the choice. Compare or, rather, contrast with those I have named Cass, Clay, Calhoun, Webster, and Seward. These have been uniformly put aside when presented to the people, and yet they, together with every Chief Secretary that country has had, have been men of colossal minds, and spent their youth and manhood in those " inspiring toils by which man masters men," and would have been justified in aspiring to positions of the very highest eminence iu any country where merit is the measure of preferment. The fouuders of the American Constitution knew that the further they got from the people by these double elections the more likely they would be to secure the fittest men for the superior offices, and it was that reason, and that alono, which induced them to frame so peculiar a plan for the election of President; but the way by which they sought to accomplish their views has absolutely failed, for the Electoral College not being deliberative, and having no discretionary power, simply meets to register a previously recorded vote. But though the details of their plan failed, their evident desigu will ever stand a monument of that rare political sagacity which ninety years of subsequent history has confirmed. The Chief Secretai'y, either in England or any of the colonies, always has been and will be a superior man. The reason is that no direct appeal is made to the mass. I know that I shall be answered that, by the proposed plau, you make a Chamber of Legislation an arena for political gladiators, each struggling for place, but I ask is this evil likely to be lessened by making the choice depend on an electorate in which property and education are put aside by ignorant numbers. Doubtless these views are distasteful, as they tend to disturb the complacency of. dull mediocrity; that the phenomena of History will justify some such opinion as I have indicated, I feel convinced they will find who are judicially impartial and capable of educing the logical inference from involved data.—Tours obediently, " Siteat." Charleston, Sept, 27.