The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1909. THE BLIGHT OF PAROCHIALISM.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 684, 8 December 1909, Page 6

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1909. THE BLIGHT OF PAROCHIALISM.

•r Qn Beveral occasions lately we have given up some of, our space to discussing /the Very, interestjug state of French politics at the present.time,: The great issue for the spring elections will; be electoral reform, and the questions involved are questions of high, present importance to the New Zealand public. For years past the.foremost French statesmen have been growing alarmed at the extent to which parochial influences aro operating against the national welfare. The Deputies were formerly ■ elected under: the system '.- /'.of Scrutin deliste— the country was divided into departments, the elector in each department voting; for Beveral candidates, Under the present system, Scrutin d'drroridissement, tho country is divided into single-Beat districts. This system has encouraged the roads and bridges member in the most lamentable fashion, and it has resulted •in a legislative degeneracy from which eyery true '. friend of the nation, is anxious to escape, In New Zea-; land, as we know, a large proportion of the members of the House are/little con: earned with general principles, or broad national issues; their business is to get as much as possible for their districts. Mem-; bars arc of ten returned. solely : because they are good advocates, for local needs; their trump card when seeking re-eleciioj' 1 is tho amount of public money they-"have got for tho district;" and happy the man who has also obtained a large number of "Government billets" for his constituents. The chief occupation of members, indeod—the chiof sourco of Mil. Hoqan's exhaustion, with which.ho harrowed our hearts the othor day—is replying to importunate billet-huntcrs, ; acting . as_ ciwane to bridge-hunting deputations, and interviewing log-rollers from tho parish. '..'.' -~ .'■■ •■.'-'.'.•.'■■

franco is suffering sorely from exactly the same subordination; by Deputies of the national to the parochial need, Tho Scrutin de lute js therefore being advocated on the ground' that it enlarges the horizon of olectors and \Doputies, and clears away a mass of obstacles on the road to large-minded reform. During recent years tho -'national achievements of the Chamber have been very slender, a result duo in: part to- tho extravagant development of the group system common in European Parliaments, but in tho main to ! the parochialism of .'the Dcbuties,: The system of Scrutin de liste, il is obvious, would put an end tp the bad result's of canvassing; and .; parochial 'pressures,. , A ..whole department'

can be addressed and appealed to, but it cannot bo easily -canvassed, and peoplo would choose their representatives on less personal grounds than at present, while Deputies, would not be tied to promises and programmes framed to suit parochial requirements. M. Millerand, the Minister for Public Works, is an ardent advocate of the Scrutin de lisle. In <i speech delivered on October 23 last, he declared it to bo indispensable to the. welfare of the Republic that tho coming appeal to tho country should be made on the system of departmental voting, His motto.had.been . La France avant tout," and' this, he held, should bo the motto of all patriotic Frenchmen. His chief, M. BiMND, has been steadily proclaiming that tho electorate must bo educated. We quoted from his important Perigucux speech the other day, and we may quote hore.the useful comment of the Spectator on his profoundly true observation that the Deputy cannot rise above "narrowipg parochial influences" unless the elector can bo taught to regard his Deputy as tho Deputy of Franco first and the delegate of the district next:

Sd long as the electors do not riso abovo local iniluences and local intrigues they will, as they are now, bo represented according to their deserts. .It is the one possiblo compensation for such an agitation as that which we are now witnessing among ourselves that the : misty and baseless .visions which the Chancellor of the Exchequer loves to call up may at least lift the elector abovo tho'horizon of his own district. It may be better in tho long run that he should seek to redress what he imagines to be an unjust distribution of property than that his ideas should go no further than getting a small post for himself ijfi return for tho vote given to his representative on that . we)l-understood condition. ' .

One result of the dominance of the parochial spirit in' New Zealand politics, a result due to the great extension of the State's; functions conjoined with the retention of Ministerial-control, has been the,creation of 130,000 dependents on the State—they are Me. Millar's figures— and the creation, on the testimony of members of Parliament themselves, of a great hunger for/''Government billets."' The same result has been ..produced in France, for Mr. J. E. C. Bodley, one of the foremost living authorities on French institutions and politics, tells us that there is an increasing desire amongst Frenchmen "to be in tho salaried service of the State." And what follows! Well, these men are voters," and their votes direct the .course :of affairs, ,so :.that "a wasteful drain on the resources of the country is encouraged] slenderly rcmum crated but needless posts being' created wholesale at the: expense ■•.. of: the taxpayer," .'As an English journal points out: "When.a multitude of small places have to be distributed,.'■ no Minister can do much in tho way of testing the qualifications of the applicants. . In this difficulty, what is more natural than that he should turn to the Member who represents the constituency in:'which the appointments have to be made. By dogrcea the patronage thus made over to meet a temporary difficulty. becomes the undisputed appanage or the representatives,* and their constituents may be trusted: to see that a property in which they are-so much interested ; shall hot be unused." The blight of parochialism, and its at-, tendant. waste, can be removed by the cultivation: of a national sontiment in the teaching him to think of New Zoaland first. a,nd Tiis parish' next. But that sentiment .cannot be , .encouraged while the conditions favourable to ] the blight, remain.' Those conditions mußt be destroyed, and they can be destroyed in only one by substituting non-politi-cal for political control of the public services, by Parliamentary rulo for.Ministerial;autocracy,