[ IVt do not Identify o%i'seloes toitk the, opinions expressed by our correspon lents.]

WHAT DECIDED THE BRUCE ELECTION?

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —If we believe the conservative Press (that is nine-tenths or more of the news papers published in the Colony), the Bruce election showed that a strong feeling against the Billance Government exists in that district, and that the electors resented the attempt on the part of the Government to iuter-meddle, by returning Mr Allan, the opposition candidate. We will take for granted that those surmises are correct ; and then the question rises, why is it so 1 The Ballance Government has proved itself the friend of the working man, always ready to support the struggling settler, earnest in the endeavor to equalise the conditions betwixt the rich and the poor, by intro ducing a taxation based upon equality of sacrifice, their records of settlement on the land are good and bond fide , and not like previous administrations when boast about rapid settlement of the waste lands, really meant that those lands were taken up by men of straw, so as to enable wealthy syndicates to do some (mean trafficking. Still it has its bitter enemies even among a certain class of settlers, and for the reason of this we must look a little below the surface. Now the Bruce constituency has always of , late years proved a tory stronghold. Why so ? Because it is in the nature of men to change their ideas in the same ratio as they change their conditions. Accumulation of capital sufficient to ensure ease for himself and a competency for his children seems to be the crowning desire of mostly every struggling settler in a new country. While he remains a struggling settler, his views are strictly liberal. He abhors land mouoply, because being short of means he cannot indulge in it. He likes to see his neighbor (who is better off ,than himself) taxed according to his income, so as to make the handicap more equal, but as he succeeds in mounting higher up the ladder his sentiments commence'to change, he then feels inclinations gradually becoming stronger to join in with others aboye him

in further improving their positions by J keeping the struggling multitude below from coming up. This is what may be called creating a social contrast. 