Page 3 Advertisements Column 3

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 563, 5 October 1869, Page 3

TO GEORQE DONNE, ESQ., M.P.C., CHARLESTON. OIR, —We the undersigned, EleeKJ toss and others of tlie district of Westiand North, have great pleasure in requesting that you will a.low yourself to be nominated as a candidate for the office of Superintendent of the Province of Nelson at the ensuing election. From the fearless and conscientious manner in which you have served our best interests in your place in the Provincial Council, we have an index to your qualifications for that office. Should you honor us by acceding to this requisition, we hereby pledge ourselves individually and collectively to use every effort to secure your return. We beg to remain, Sir, Your obedient servants John Fennell Patrick Kelly Robt. Patterson Body Slattery Fred. W. Thiele James Walsh Thomas Nevin Benj. Sutherland Alex. Roulston, and 177 others. To John Fennell, Robert Patterson, Fredk. W. Thiele, Thomas Nevin, Alexander Roulston, Patrick Kelly, Rody Slattery, James Walsh, Benj. Sutherland and the other 177 gentlemen signing the requisition. Gentlemen, —Although for reasons hereinafter set forth I cannot comply with your solicitation to allow myself to be nominated as a candidate for the office of Superintendent of the Nelson Province, I beg to assure you that your spontaneous requisition is nevertheless equally gratifying to me because of the sentiments of confidence and esteem it contains. It is pleasureable to find one's efforts in a representative capacity, directed under circumstances of difficulty during a period of four sessions, meeting with even a passing meed of praise or approval. But that the occasion can scarcely be deemed a fitting one, I might yield to the impulse now experienced, and here address you fully upon past, present, and future local and general Provincial politics. As I shall have an opportunity, however, of doing so by-and-by—as on previous occasions—by public meeting, my remarks will be confined merely to a few brief references to the pending event which has evoked the present requisition, and that is the election of a new Superintendent for the Province.

Iu the election of a Superintendent almost everything of immediate importance to goldfields interests may be said to be involved; for, making due allowances for the changes and uncertainties appertaining to all human things, the new Superintendent, when elected, will hold office for a period of four years. It is of the utmost consequence, therefore, that we (I mean the residents of the South-west Goldfields) should not lose sight of the true issues at stake in the coming contest, and of our true relative position with regard to it. The question, I am aware, is one of a comprehensive, and not of a purely local character, although local interests may be seriously affected by the ultimate result. It would be no less a mistake, however, for us te treat the matter from an exclusively local point of view. Such would only be to follow the example so recently set us by the gentleman now filling the post of Superintendent, who, but a few evenings ago, shamelessly, sinfully, and for manifest ulterior purposes ; endeavoured to foster in the minds of the people of the settled districts those feelings of distrust and prejudice which had already too active an existence regarding the aims, habits, and occupations of the people resident in this portion of the Province —a distrust and prejudice chiefly arising from a lack of knowledge concerning us, rather than from any actual inimical feeling towards us. It is sincerely to be hoped, however, that our brethren in the settled districts, who happily ham " a stake in the country," and who are, fortunately for themselves, possessed of " houses and of lands," will have sufficient penetration to see through this gilded but excessively hollow device, and will reward it according to its deserts. The interests of one portion of the Province should be —and with wisdom might be made to be—the interest of the whole. This, however, can never be so long as the present Superintendent is permitted, after ancient fashion, to control its destinies. If any local dissatisfaction has arisen in this portion of the Province, the responsibility rests exclusively with the gentleman who has held the administrative reins of the country during the past two years and a half. The danger to be apprehended and guarded against by us will be to see that those feelings of hostility engendered by that misgovernment of our affairs which has so signally characterised the tenure of office of the present Chief Magistrate do not tempt us to lose sight of the true political situation in disposing of the question now about to be tried. It is to obviate such a contingency that, in this reply, I find myself enlarging upon the question at issue. There is no disguising the fact that we are electorally weak, a circumstance about which there is apparently a good deal of popular local misapprehension. It is either not generally known, or altogether forgotten by many, that we are incapable, of ourselves, of rendering much practical service in the return of a "West Coast candidate. Nelson, with its two thousand six hundred and forty-nine duly registered voters upon the roll, representing men, for the most part, of settled habits and industries—the