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It is not avarice or virtue. It is opportunity that often creates the booder speculations and the rogue. What better body can officials of whose probity we need feel no doubt and whose policy we need not entertain to a degree of elected representatives who might in future years be returned to office largely by mixed votes, pledged not to approve a policy which they have disapproved and which might have disastrous effects for the Colony.
There might when schemes have ever been proposed find it to their advantage to enter the Council, in order to promote personal aggrandisement or enrichment. An illustration of this is given than the case of Jabez Balfour - the company promoter and absconder, whose extradition is now being sought from Argentina?
I am not therefore inclined to vote for the provision of the opportunity. Perhaps some of the signatories to the petition have not looked quite so far ahead as I have. I have lived in this Colony for many years, the best part of a lifetime - I have seen repeated changes in projects for their own sake. This has happened in some countries, and if the power be vested in the elected members of Council it might one day happen here. We cannot claim any monopoly of civic virtue in the community.
And I have witnessed several important changes in the local conditions, and there will be further changes, and they always make for the better.
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