LODGER FRANCHISE.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1151, 17 February 1874, Page 4

LODGER FRANCHISE.

[wkstport evening stak.] Would it not be well in the interval before the next meeting of the New Zealand Parliament, that the effort made last year to secure the right of Electoral Franchise to lodgers should be renewed, and the movement brought to a definite issue ? It is by far a more important and necessary step than the extension of the franchise to women, and yet of the two subjects the latter has of late found the greater favor. A Bill should be brought in early in the next session to secure electoral rights to lodgers, as representing a class by whom the privileges to be thus accorded would be intelligently used. It is a very great injustice that one particular section of New Zealand colonists, comprising men who have thrown in their lot with others for good or evil times, and who out of their careful sayings have invested in companies and associations, all tending to increase the prosperity of the colony, should by the mere force of accidental circumstances, debarring them from setting up their own households, be deprived of the right granted to any male individual who may possess or occupy the merest apology for a house over which he may claim to be the master, although he may even not have any family ties, and be in every degree an infinitely worse colonist than his neighbor who lives in lodgings. If we remember rightly, numerously signed petitions from various towns in New Zealand were prepared just previous to the last session of Parliament, and a promise made early in the session, that Bills for the regulation of elections should be introduced, which would in reality give effect to the prayer of the petitioners, but nothing came of it. Other subjects of presumed greater interest occupied the attention of the legislature, and the subject still awaits active agitation.