NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1380, 5 March 1912, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

- A "Liberal" paper, the Napier' Daily Telegraph, which varies its devotion to Mr. Vigor Brown and his chief with excursions into general l discussion of a kind that must disturb its friends, has been explaining that the state of "Liberalism" is a state of "Caucus rulo"—the Caucus rule that even our "Liberal" friends, commenting on its working in Australia, have condemned. Our contemporary, of course, endeavours most ridiculously to charge the development of Caucus government against the Reform party, using arguments that we confess we cannot follow. "To the Caucus," it says (and it opposes government by Caucus), "we seem to be drifting, if we have not already-reached it. In its ultimate development it may mean that every member of the House will vote according to directions from a Junta deliberating outside the House." "The Government," says this very interesting friend of "Liberalism," "has now 'gathered in' all four of the Labour members. But, to put the case with brutal frankness, the price has now to be paid, and in this case the quid pro quo seems to be the Caucus." To which we can say with the utmost cheerfulness: let "Liberalism" pay, or try to pay, its price. Let it go ahead and persuade the farmers that Mr. Payne, for instance, is a jolly good fellow, that Paynes and Robertsons are the only hope of the man on the land.

One of the southern papers, with that fatal thoughtlessness which seems to have become a habit in Wardist circles, has some editorial observations on "the gift of prophecy." The late Mr. Seddon, it declares, correctly predicted a few days before the poll, down to the last detail, the result of the general election of 1905. He hacl the gift of prophecy indeed, if this be true. We are then assured that "his mantle seems to have descended to some extent upon his successor. On the night of the second ballots, when tho polls had plunged the parties into a state of confusion, Sir Joseph Ward telegraphed to_ tho friend who had been the recipient.of Mr. Seddox's confidence, 'We shall have a majority of two.' " It is a pity to spoil the story, but the "prophet," between the ballots, < predicted that ho would win eighteen of the thirty contests on December 14. Actually ho won only eleven. His southorn admirer gleefully, but very incautiously, concludes by observing: "The prophets on the other side of politics have not fared so well." Wo certainly admit it; but that was because we_ took ffdolity to pledges as a factor in our calculations. The point chances to havo been extremely well put by "Civis" in the Otago Daily Times:— Idist week's pronheti" arithmetic that oounted up the votes on Mr. Mossey's no-confidenco' motion, and—as wo now discover—counted them up wrong, l>ased itself on nn erroneous assumption. It assumed in hon. members, one and all, the existence of common honesty. Itself nn honest arithmetic, it would have held good for honest men. Perhaps we need a definition:—What is an honest man? Is the man honest who oould say in the House, as the newspapers report, "If ho deemed it expedient, to break his pledge, he would not scruple about doing so"? A political variable of these principles is beyond the scope of any conceivable arithmetic. If the professions nnd promises bv which n man obtains election to Parliament are to be false as dicers' oaths there is no morn to be said—cadit quacstio.

Our "Liberal" friends are beginning to grow extremely uneasy about the moral effect upon the public of the pledge-breaking that enabled them to hold office on the Speaker's casting-vote. This is very evident, from ft laboured and of course t|tiitn unconvincing Attempt by the Christjduuoh organ of "Liboialiam ' to find.

a precedent for the action of Messrs. Payne and Roiiehtsox in the famous action by the "Auckland rats"' in 1870. During 1879, after a series of contradictory votings in the House had produced a deadlock, four Auckland members elected to support the Grey Government went; over to the Hall Government. There, is really hardly a single point of resemblance between the two cases; Messrs. Payne and Robeiitson were elected for no purpose save to vote against the Government; they induced their districts to elect them on the pretence that they would so vote; and having been elected on tbat_ understanding, they promptly decided to let their districts and their obligations "go hang." The Christchurch paper quotes from a speech by Sir John Hall, the burden of which was that while "party loyalty" w.as a virtue, yet "if carried so far as to sacrifice the interests of the country to party considerations, then that virtue becomes a vice." Now, the public interest really was served in some sense by the action of the "Auckland rats"; 'but in the vcrv speech quoted there are words which show that Sir John Hall would not have found a word in defence of Messrs. Payne and Robertson or the party that led them to dishonour their pledges. The one defence of the "rats ' was "that circumstances had entirely altered since the elections; that things had come to a deadlock; and that, unless some concession were made, the country would be placed in a very difficult and dangerous position." Quite apart from the main point (which is quite sufficient by itself), it is quite plain that in the present case circumstances had not altered since the election,' and that had Messrs. Payne and Robertson kept their pledges there would not have been any deadlock, but a majority of four against the Government. It is obviously an utterly hopeless case that tries to rely on the 1879 precedent. The Christchurch paper incidentally seeks to explain Mr. Veitch's vote on the no-confidence motion (which it is kind enough not to censure !) by saying that his pledge was "of a more precise nature" than that of his colleagues. Why, everyone knows that the reverse was the case. The precision was with Payne and Robertson. As we have said, our contemporary s lame and self-contradictory articleit says at one point that it does not hold a member is "justified in breaking the spirit of his pledged word to his constituents, or in attempting to escape from its obligations without going to them for approval in the only way it can be expressed"—:r. plain evidence that our "Liberal friends are beginning to realise that they and Messrs. Payne and Robertson made a fearful mistake.

A strike with several funny sides to it took place in Sydney the other day. The Sydney Worker is the official organ of the Australian Labour party, and is owned and controlled by the Australian Workers' Union, the organisation that directs the Labour movement in Australia. All the members of the literary staff are members of the Writers' and Artists' Union and of the A.W.U. For some time they have been aggrioved at the refusal of the management to pay union wages, and their grievance at last became no longer bearable. They went on strike. This was amusing enough—the refusal of the official organ of Australian unionism to pay union wages, and the refusal of the staff to labour cheerfully "for the cause." But funnier still was the comment of Mr. Spence, M.P., the president of the Australian Workers' Union, and ex officio, the leader of the Labour movement in the Commonwealth. Mr. Spence is the gentleman who, at the time of the Broken Hill strike, and in leisure moments since, has proclaimed the doctrine that it is the duty of a unionist to "make the life of a non-unionist a hell upon earth." It is he who suggested that if a unionist sees a non-unionist dying, it is his business to let him die. Well, Mr. Spence was.bitter against his literary friends. "They are nothing," he said, "but a lot of bushrangers." And Mr. Spence went on to make an observation that ought to become a landmark of Australian unionism. "They made me feel," he said, "that it is no wonder that employers complain sometimes about the coercive tactics of employees." But we may be quite sure that Mr. Spence will not profit from reflection upon this feeling, and will neglect the lesson of the affair, namely, that men will remain men, despite all the theories and rhetoric of people like himself.

Although the general body of capable Civil Servants are political only to the extent of privately wishing, as citizens, for clean and efficient government, it is an unfortunate lact that many highly-placed officials are partisans of the vanishing "Liberal" party, either by habit or out of gratitude. We shall probably have to take an early opportunity to go into some detail upon this point. In the meantime, we may rejoice that the new political conditions—of which the most vital is the disappearance of the "Liberal" despotism—must make for new thought in the Civil Service, It could not be otherwise, under a twenty-year-long dominance by a Tammany party, than that many Government appointees should consider themselves party janizaries. PresidentTaft, who, as we mentioned yesterday, has done notable work in breaking down the connection between tho Public Service and the Government of the day, dealt very trenchantly in his New Year Messago to Congress with the curse of "bossism." His main recommendation was the removal of about 60,000 public officials from tho reach of the politicians. "I am confident," he said, "that such a change would greatly reduce the cost of administering tho Government, and that it would add greatly to its efficiency. It would take away the power to use the' patronage of tho Government for political purposes. When officers are tecommended by Senators and Congressmen from political motives and for political services rendered, it is impossible to expect that while in office the appointees will not regard their tenure as more or less dependent upon continued political service for their patrons." The New Yor* Post, an enemy of Mil. T.vrr.r party, warmly applauds this patriotic declaration. For such ends,, it says, as "the rescue of the Public Servico from the clutches of the politicians, President Taft has shown that he will go as far and work as hard as the next man." And that, the Post concludes, in evident approval, is "Taft's kind of progressiveness." This great Democratic journal is backed up by all the best of the other Democratic papers, all of whom insist upon the usefulness of a nonnolitical Civil Service to "popular Government and honesty and efficiency." It is left to the fallen "Liberals" of New Zealand, who onnosc a Civil Service Board, to hold .tho oppoaltJi v|(iw and call thcniMjvGß "Progressive*." I