51
The result of this was that a Municipal Council sometimes sat for more, and sometimes for less, than a year.
In 1865, however, the way in which the Municipal Council was chosen was changed according to a resolution that had been passed at a Public Municipal meeting of April 15, 1865,4% and which provided that a separate poll spread over several days should take place for the election of the Municipal Council.
Some days later the elections were held after the new system and in the final Land Regulations of 1869 this mode was adopted (article IX, X, XVIII and XIX). There it was also laid down that the Municipal Council should be elected in February or March of each year.
No reasons were given why it was deemed necessary to alter the rules for choosing a Municipal Council, except that “it was being urgently called for", but it may be imagined that with the growth of the population and the number of land-renters, the old procedure was becoming increasingly unwieldy.
The period of small town politics was partly closed with this separate voting procedure. One of the consequences might have been that the composition of the Municipal Council would rest on a broader basis, as generally more people thought it worthwhile to vote, which took only an instant instead of going to a Public Meeting which might take a whole afternoon or evening. Other things being equal, there might even have developed a kind of election campaign and for 1866 it seems that something of the kind was indeed held, witnessing the remark that "the usual number of placards decorated the walls of the settlement, some conveying rather happy hits".44
But any developments in this direction were nipped in the bud by the provision in the Land Regulations of 1869, article XVIII, that "should the number of names proposed for election be exactly nine or less than nine and more than four, it shall not be necessary to have a poll..". In such a case, anyone opposed to one of the candidates could not vote against him.
No doubt sometimes the elections were really contested, but later it was often complained that they amounted to nothing but ritual affairs: "the stage will be set for the annual election-