GERYMANDERING.

Inangahua Times, Volume IX, Issue 1490, 31 December 1884, Page 2

GERYMANDERING.

A correspondent of an English paper 8~y«:— It may not >>• known to all your readers what is the derivation of the word " gerrymandering," which Lord Salisbury has introduced iuto the greatest political controversy of the day. It ii a word borrowed from America, where it appears that there was at one time, in the State of Massachusetts, a politician named Gerry, who managed so to manipulate the electoral districts of the State as to carry everything his own way. There was nothing like principle or plan in his electoral divisions. They were framed for party purposes, and on many assumed the strangest shapes. "Look at that." said an opponent to a sympathiser, showing him the figure made l»y sonic of Mr Gerry's electoral | boundarifea, " why it's more like a Salamander than an electoral division !' | " A Salamander?" roplied th« friend ■ " why I call it a Gerrymander ?" From that day such practices have been denounced as gerrymandering, and in no where was that practice more splendidly punished that on its first introduction in the circumstances narrated above. The success of the | Gerrymander, as history relates, was hut temporary. You may parcel out teriitory, and cut it iv any shape you will, but the minds of human beings are not to he so controlled.