The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1870-01-15
The Coming Elections.

On the eve of the biennial election for members
of the Legislative Assembly, there is naturally no
small degree of interest and solicitude on all hands
as to the candidates and the principles which
they are likely to advocate.
The public is familiar with the general charac-
ter of the late political discussions, and are left in
no doubt or uncertainty as to the side which the
Ministerial cabal, who have got possession of the
Government, will take when the questions lately
debated are revived in the Legislative Assembly.
True to their instincts, which seem to be as I'M
erring as the impulse which heads young ducks to
the water, when it became clear that their private
emoluments as capitalists and sugar planters were
in danger of being limited by a measure of justice
and humanity to the laboring classes, with an eye
singly to their own interests, and an alacrity and
zeal worthy of Il better cause, they promptly, al
though there were a few skin-deep prOtestations
of impartiality, cast their lot on the side of power
and capital, against the substantial good of the
masses and the permanent prosperity Of the
country.
Personal profit too far outweighed any cheap
reputation to be acquired by standing forth as the
champion and protector of the weak against the
powerful, an opportunity to figure in which char
acter is seldom wasted uprI the Ministry. Their
conduct has not had even the semblanee of i'm
Partially, much less have they manifested the
least disposition, or made the slightest effort to
justify their assumption of the character of
guardians of the people, blazoned forth so con-
spicuously during the whole of the present reign,
to grace an act most arbitrary in itself and unset
thing all the foundations of law and right. In
general, amid their peacock grandeur, wrapped
up in n ridiculous and childish vanity, or absorbed
in devoted schemes for their own ACKNOWLEDGEMENT,
they have little time or inclination for any meas
ures of merely public utility. That any one
other than themselves should have been guilty of
the presumption of conceiving or suggesting any
measure likely to promote the public good, is a
sufficient guarantee of its improperly or inexpe-
diency.
1t seems a very simple proposition, and one to
which no just mind can refuse assent, that such
just and humane measures as will promote the
substantial good of the many are to be preferred
to those which secure the merely pecuniary profit
of the few. To make a particular application to
our own state. Such laws, constitutional. in ac-
cordance with sound political economy, and
conformable with the advanced ideas of our age.
should be passed as would secure to every man
that measure of compensation to which he is nat
urally entitled, uninauenced by anything facti-
tious by ignorance or by deception. This is bare
justice to the laborer and no injustice to the master.
Whereas the arbitrary interference with the nat
ural laws which regulate wages, in order to keep
it down, operates to deprive a large body Of men
of their inherent rights in order merely to increase
the accumulation of the wealth of a very few,
and enable them to live in a style of greater mag
~nifcence. The reduction of wages sought for is
not to be temporary, but to last forever, SO that
it cannot be justified in the same way as certain
duties upon foreign manufactures are justified, to
encourage home production in its infancy until it
is able to stand alone.
We have heard of certain casuists who justified
the employment of Ubiquitous means by good ends,
but here we have means and ends equally unjust
and abominable. 1t is precisely in this view that
we charge the administration in this most mo-
mentous crisis of our history with a most mean,
base and cowardly desertion of their duty as
guardians of the weak with being bribed
by their private interest to betray their public
trust, and as unfit to discharge the meanest func-
tons requiring integrity of purpose or moral
courage. Through the columns of its organ.
their Own mouths, aud by means of Judicial and