The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prevalebit. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER, 7, 1885. Representative System.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1320, 7 November 1885, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prevalebit. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER, 7, 1885. Representative System.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and a law without which no race could long exist. But it is an instinct that is liable to become so intensely, narrowly, timidly selfish, as to defeat its own purpose, so that in all organised associations safety is best secured when each individual has been taught either by reason, by experience, or by instinct, that he preserves himself most effectually when he is ready to lay down his life for the safety of the community of which he forms a part. A flock of sheep, however large, falls a prey to tne smallest dog, because each individual sheep is careful only for its own safety; a swarm of bees defies the largest animal, because each bee is ready at any moment to give up its sting and its life in defence of its home and its community. There is no safety in the armed rabble when each individual shirks the post of danger, Harm seldom comes to the army of veterans wnere each man has well learned that his safety can only be secured by the safety of his company. The great want of New Zealand at the present time is that at least some of her public men should learn the veteran’s lesson, and be endowed with a wider, braver, nobler sense of self-pre-servation, which would lead them sometimes to put their country before themselves, and seek their own success and safety in the success and safety of those who have entrusted their public interests to their care. Few such men remain in the New Zealand Parliament, and we fear that it will only excite a smile when we suggest that there is yet a possibility of restoring some of those banished from our Legislative Assembly by adopting a different system of selecting representatives, and even a possibility of retaining men there who do not devote the whole of their attention to the security of their own seats. Such men would not merely collect, echo, and intensify every popular frenzy, but would dare to stand alone if necessary, to tell even their constituents that they were mistaken, and to maintain that there are national questions of greater importance than a local bridge, a stationmaster’s salary, or the appointment of a Justice of the Peace. In our very first experiments with self-government it was seen that we were in danger of losing all national spirit and of fighting over each local want; but among the first men sent to the House of Representatives there!

were a few with far more extended vision, chosen for their ability and fitness, who could rise above that spirit and whose conduct made the rest ashamed to give way entirely to it. All such shame appears now to be gone, as nine-tenths of our legislators openly avow that they would at anytime add a million to the debt of the colony if it would secure a thousand for some pet project in their own district, or in other words secure their own return to a position for which they possess no sort ;of qualification. This utter absence of national feeling has always been feared and deplored and has been made the plea tor various projects professing to have its abatement for their object, but which have only contributed to its intensity. Thus the great national “ Public Works Policy ” of 1870 was to have abolished it, but the scramble for borrowed money gave it life and force and fatality such as it had never possessed before. The abolition of the provinces some seven years later was to have buried it, but the transfer of each local question to the national legislature gave it constant employment that developed an amount of strength and discipline and determination that made tt irresistible. The redistribution, of seats a few years later, and the allocation of a single representative to each small section of the electors made it almost impossible for men with any national opinions or aspirations to obtain a seat in the House, and left legislation, all but exclusively, in the hands of men who could command the sympathies, truckle to the prejudices, and give expression to the reasonable or unreasonable demands of some particular locality. Thus we have descended to our present low position as a self-governing community, altogether wanting in those higher attributes of individual sacrifice for national good, public spirit, or even any courageous gregarious instinct. The question arises, Have we ever tried any likely remedy for this great and universally admitted evil, or even adopted any method likely to give us representatives of a higher stamp ? We certainly have not. Each step that we have taken has been in the other direction. Nor will the present assemblage of self-at-any-price men seriously contemplate their own annihilation. It is not to be expected that they will ever put their foot down to crush a system that opens the Parliament of New Zealand to them and closes it to better men, until those who suffer from their incapacity and selfishness are sufficiently aroused and enlightened to demand a system under which such men can no longer be returned.

The system proposed by Mr Hare we will examine in our next issue.