Summary of Proposed Reforms.

Defects of Electoral Machinery.

The complicated and limited method of making up the electoral roll year by year shuts out a large number of the really qualified electors from the suffrage. There are only three months of the year during which claims to be enrolled can be made. The process of revising is too favourable to objectors, whether official or private; and does not afford sufficient facilities to electors or claimants for becoming aware of, or defending their rights against objections. And yet too long a period elapses between the claim for enrolment, and the qualification to vote. Claims must be made in January, February, or March. The successful applicant is not entitled to vote until September or October.

Several years ago I proposed a system, under which every roll should be always open to fresh applicants (excepting during the vacancy of any seat in the particular page 42 District); and no elector could be struck off or applicant refused, without personal notice of the objection. I am ready to renew that proposal in detail.

Unequal Representation of Numbers.

Neither by Sir George Grey as Governor, when in 1853 he inaugurated the Constitution, nor by Parliament itself in dealing with the question during the whole of the subsequent 23 years, has the above principle of justice ever been observed. The total number of electors on the Rolls of all the electoral districts in New Zealand, for the year 1876-77, was 61,755. But a large number of electors are each on the Rolls of two or more districts. So that, in order to comply with the strict letter of the clause, a considerable reduction would have to be made from the above total. But, besides the advantage which some many-propertied electors may gain by having a vote in each of several districts, the proportion between members and electors in many districts is enormously at variance with the above rule for the allotment of number of members to each in proportion to the whole.

12,639 electors return 27 Members, whereas they are only entitled to 17!

4,935 electors return 10 Members, although only entitled to 7.

The above 32 districts, with an agregate of 17,574 electors, return 37 Members, although only entitled to 24!

33,156 electors return only 32 Members, although entitled to 45.

If the proportion of electors in each district respectively should remain the same on the Rolls for 1877-78 13 seats ought to be taken from the districts in the first two lists, and given to those in the third list. The new Rolls will, no doubt, show in some respects different proportions; but the new allotment must, in justice, be very different from the old one. Besides the aggregate injustice described above, there are atrocious cases of injustice, as between individual districts and between different groups of districts. For instance:—Wallace with 199 electors, and Cheviot with 238, return one member each; while East Coast with 1488, Newtown with 1167, Marsden with 1276, and Mataura with 1062, return only one each; Waikato, Cheviot, Lyttelton, Nelson Surburbs, Nelson City (2), Collingwood, Waimea, and Wallace, with an aggregate of only 2959 electors, returning 9 members, although little more than entitled to 4; while Thames, Dunedin, Grey Valley, East Coast, and Newtown, with an aggregate of 12,642 electors, also return 9 members, although more than entitled to 17. The three districts comprising the defunct Province of Taranaki, returning 3 members, with an aggregate of 1649 electors, entitling them to less than 2½; while Thames, with 4019, entitling it to 5½ returns only 2—no more than Cheviot or Wallace, with their aggregate total of only 438 electors, entitling them to little more than half a member between them.

Ballot no Protection.

Vote by Ballot exists in Form.

But it does not act so as to prevent bribery or intimidation. The proceeding of inscribing the voter's electoral roll number on his voting paper (however necessary it may be for identification in case of a disputed election, and the alleged illegality of the vote on account of personation or other fault), leads the majority of electors to believe that the manner in which they shall vote will not be an absolute secret. They are therefore still accessible to that "inquisitorial" process, by which the wealthy man can attach a condition of extended credit or money pressure to the manner in which the elector, who has anything to hope or fear, shall exercise his vote, and exert himself to influence others. An interview in the bank parlour, or in the wealthy private individual's office or business room, with a timely reference to books, balances, overdrafts, outstanding accounts, and possible credits, still has the power to assure the voter, who is dependent on any personal money question, that his credit will be extended, his draft honoured, or "the screw put on" him, according as the interviewed "free and independent." shall vote. Everyone who carefully observed the features of the last general election, must have been made fully aware how active apart the managers of certain Banks, especially the Bank of New Zealand which has almost a monopoly of Government business, took in promoting the return of candidates favourable to the late Government, and how effectual was their interested interference. "While such things can go on as they do, it is impossible to believe that the form of voting by ballot, existing under the present law, affords a reliable protection against the bribery and intimidation of the poorer or more dishonest, by their superior in wealth or dishonesty. Moreover, while the voting is supposed to be secret, public nominations, canvassing, committees, and shows of hands are still kept up, although the honest use of devices by any candidate or voter takes away the protection of secrecy, which the ballot ought to afford thoroughly, if it is to serve its alleged purpose at all.

My own belief is, that under open voting the elector was really more independent than he is under the so-called ballot as now administered. Many an elector believes that it is the officials and people in power only, who have a possible knowledge of the way in which his vote has been given. Therefore he is subject to the influence of the wealthy and powerful: but he is no longer liable to the dread of disgrace among the men of his own class, or to the recrimination of a defeated candidate, in case he should vote in a manner diametrically opposed to his public and private declarations of opinion, and to the best interests of his fellow-men. Under the ballot, too, that personal confidence, which used to exist between honest member and honest constituents, is virtually at an end. If the ballot be really secret, the professed supporter of a candidate or member may be a person whom it is desirable for him to consult and confide in, or he may be an opponent in disguise, seeking to suck his brains and to beguile him into some unpopular public proceeding or private interference with the independence of other electors. For the honest, conscientious, and unwary candidate or member, it is like entering under your own signature into a newspaper controversy with anonymous antagonists. If the candidate or member wear his political heart on his sleeve, he is at a disadvantage with political antagonists and electioneering agents who use language for concealing their thoughts. Ballot, at its best, frees the elector from all public responsibility to his fellow-citizens for any bad use which he may make of his secret influence over the choice of legislators; while it does away with the benefit of good example and respect for integrity in politics. It gives an undue advantage to the dissembler, over the upright man who is not ashamed of his political actions; and under the pretence of independence for the elector, creates members who, being callous to any personal blame by anonymous voters, may act with unscrupulous and irresponsible servility and corruption. But if, in compliance with the wishes of the majority, we must keep to the Ballot, let us at any rate have it in its integrity! Let every candidate propose himself. Let Election Committees and canvassing be forbidden by law. Let there be no show of hands. Take every precaution against false page 45 votes before voting; but leave no mark whatever on the token of a vote, by which a returning offiicer, scrutineer, or even himself shall be able to identify the voter after he has once dropped the token into the box. Blackballing at a Club or in any other institution, would cease to be anonymous, if every ball had on it a number corresponing with that of the voter on a published list of members.

Class Poll Hours.

The hours during which a vote can be given, are confined to those during which the working-man is exclusively occupied. The poll opens when he begins to work; the poll closes before he leaves off. He cannot poll before or after the usual working hours. He has only the dinner-hour: and, besides losing his meal he may be too far from a polling-booth to get there and back to his work within the hour. This gives an undeniable advantage to the voters who are not dependent on wages, or to employers who can oiler the bribe of not stopping them for a short day's work. The Parliamentary Elections (Metropolis) Bill, extending the hours of polling in the City and Metropolitan Boroughs of London to 8 o'clock in the evening, was read a third time in the House of Lords on the 21st February, and is no doubt by this time law: the Committee of the House of Commons which recommended it, reporting that they made no recommendation as to rural districts, only because they were not instructed to inquire into the application to them of the proposed alteration. Why should not a reform, adopted without opposition as so desirable at home, be adopted here, where there is a larger proportion of electors employed at daily working-hours than in the old country?

Agitation for Reforms.

It is necessary to consider attentively these electoral defects, giving political pre-ponderance to wealth and power over the humble daily workers; because without equality in these e'ectoral powers, all conflicts for political reforms of a more equitable character to the humbler classes must be fought at a disadvantage.

Advocates of reform in taxation, should therefore also advocate extension of the franchise, allotment of representation according to numbers, and reform in the manner of obtaining and using the electoral franchise.

Agitation for political reform of any kind is to be carried on by discussion in private as well as in public. By giving or supporting lectures in public, or taking part in private conversation on the subject; by forming Working Men's Clubs, and Reform Societies; by sufforting the diffusion of popular knowledge on the subject through the purchase and distribution of pamphlets and tracts, and especially by supporting newspapers that contain information and arguments favourable to the reforms: by all these means, the way can be prepared.

At meetings preparatory to elections, those who wish for the reforms should unite to support candidates favourable to them, irrespective of their opinions on questions of less public importance, of local or distant residence, or of personal gratitude or attachment to the member or candidate, or his busy friends.

Attention should not be diverted from the main subject by listening to any attempt at raising up other questions, as grounds for party differences. Whether the Land Fund be spent where it is raised or not; whether the price of public land shall continue to be different in different parts of the Colony, or established at an uniform rate throughout it; whether local self-government should be administered by Counties or Road Boards, or by a mixture of both; whether education shall be free, secular, compulsory, high or low class. All such and many other questions, however important in themselves, are of little importance comparatively, and can afford to wait, until Justice shall have been obtained in the practical establishment of a System of Taxation under which every inhabitant of New Zealand shall contribute to the cost of its Government, not in proportion to his personal expenditure, but in proportion to the personal revenue which good Government enables him to receive.

Let us by all means have free trade in land tenure as well as in commerce; also in taxation. Let no class be protected against paying its just share. If our Democratic Constitution was granted to us in order that a Monied and Landed Aristocracy should be founded, and endowed with all political power, and if that un-natural appendage prove persistently unwilling to yield any of its exclusive advantages, let it be compelled at least to contribute to the public revenue fairly in proportion to those advantages, and not continue to make the mass of the people, under the delusive pretence of a liberal suffrage and equal laws, pay the largest proportion of the cost of Government wielded by the few, and of the yearly interest of borrowed money so lavishly spent for the improvement and increased value of all landed and other property, and for the multiplication of incomes far above the necessary wants of those who so cheerfully receive them, but who so churlishly grudge their fair contribution in return to the common purse.

I conclude by asking every reader of this pamphlet, who may approve of its object, to recommend others not only to read it, but to buy other copies for themseives and their friends. Thus I shall be aided as well as encouraged in further active efforts to help Sir George Grey and others in achieving a most necessary, just, and therefore popular measure of